The Compassionate Instinct

Unfortunately, Americans’ trust in one another does not generally react to historical events the way their trust in institutions does. In fact, according to the General Social Survey, trust in each other has declined much more steadily and consistently than has our trust in institutions. Since there are few, if any, scandals that seem to impugn the “average person,” it takes a major event to influence America’s trust in individuals in the way that their trust in institutions is routinely influenced.

WE WANT TO BELIEVE

While it may be difficult, if not impossible, to control interpersonal trust—you cannot tell people to trust each other—we can take steps to make our institutions more trustworthy. Indeed, it may be Americans’ more resilient trust in institutions that is our best hope of restoring mutual trust. Institutions help facilitate social, political, and economic transactions of all kinds by reducing uncertainty for individuals. Experiments show that when individuals successfully engage in an exchange that involves trust, it creates more trust and positive emotions.

For instance, sociologist Peter Kollock reports that at the end of a series of lab experiments involving trusting exchanges, study participants who trusted one another and reciprocated the trust sought each other out, greeted each other as old friends, and, in one case, made plans to meet for lunch the next day. Since many of our daily transactions with one another—for instance, in church or at work—are mediated by larger institutions, making these institutions more trustworthy seems like a vital first step toward cultivating trust in society at large.

Research has identified steps that institutions can take to promote trust and help reduce distrust. For example, by protecting minority rights (through voting protections and antidiscrimination policies), a government can facilitate trust and cooperation among individuals who might otherwise be wary of each other. Indeed, looking at 46 countries over a 10-year period, one of us (Pamela Paxton) found that more democratic countries—countries that safeguard these kinds of rights—produce more trusting citizens.

This result is echoed in other studies. For example, a team of researchers led by University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart found that countries that had embraced democracy, gender equality, multiculturalism, and tolerance for gays and lesbians saw big jumps in happiness over a 17-year period. And according to Robert Putnam, we can build cross-group trust by promoting meaningful interaction across ethnic lines and expanding social support for new immigrants.

Part of our effort to rebuild trust should involve providing a quality education to all Americans, for study after study shows that people with more education express more trust. Working toward equality is another possible step. Several studies have found that citizens of the most egalitarian societies are most likely to trust each other and their institutions.

There may be little that the government or other institutions can do to increase individual sociability, but individual citizens can help rebuild trust by joining community groups, connecting with neighbors, and talking to others about important issues in their lives. And if the leaders of national and local voluntary associations work to build better connections across different groups, they will help to rebuild community and a sense of trust.

Of course, we cannot blindly trust institutions, or each other. While America may want to be a trusting nation, it certainly doesn’t want to be a nation of chumps. In an age when institutions have been shown to betray our trust—and those betrayals are amplified over and over through the media—many more people might logically and understandably see The X-Files slogan—“Trust no one”—as good advice.

This is why vague, unsupported calls for increased trust in institutions like banks or the office of the president are not viable solutions to the decline in trust. Instead, Americans need to see concrete steps to improve institutional transparency and accountability and to reduce fraud.

The exact steps vary from institution to institution, but all must be supported by an underlying commitment to honesty and reliability. Banks, for example, should implement policies to prevent the kind of deceptive lending practices that contributed to the fall 2008 financial meltdown. Government should open records, investigate abuses of power, and hew to constitutional principles. For institutions to be able to promote interpersonal trust, Americans must be able to trust that leaders and institutions will do what they say they are going to do—keep our money safe, protect our freedoms, advance our health, and so on—even when we are disappointed by particular individuals.