What makes you trust someone

Hollywood is a small world, and making something common knowledge in a small world is a good hedging strategy. In one study I did exploring perceptions of reciprocal trust, I found that both managers and subordinates overestimated how much they were trusted by the people in the other category. This discrepancy in self-other perception—a trust gap—has an important implication: Most of us tend to underinvest in communicating our trustworthiness to others, because we take it for granted that they know or can readily discern our wonderful qualities of fairness, honesty, and integrity.

Sending strong and clear signals not only attracts other tempered trusters but also deters potential predators, who are on the lookout for easy victims sending weak and inconsistent cues. Robert Axelrod, a pioneer in this stream of research, used the colorful term provocability to capture this idea: In order to keep your trust relations on an even keel, and the playing field level, you have to be willing not only to take chances by initially trusting a bit signaling the willingness to cooperate but also to retaliate strongly, quickly, and proportionately signaling that you will strike back when your trust is abused.

His research showed that you can be nice and not finish last—but only if you are firm and consistent with respect to punishing offenses. Whom should I invest my money with? Whom should I allow to operate on me? They are good mind readers, know what steps to take to reassure people, and proactively allay the anxiety and concerns of others.

A good example is President John F. Kennedy in his famous commencement address at American University in , in which he praised the admirable qualities of the Soviet people and declared his willingness to work toward mutual nuclear disarmament with Soviet leaders. We know from Soviet memoirs that Premier Nikita Khrushchev was impressed, believing that Kennedy was sincere in trying to break from the past and could be trusted to work on this issue. Many studies highlight the central importance of personal connections in the trust-building process—and appropriately so.

This finding does not necessarily mean, however, that your trust in leaders or persons of power must be based on a history of sustained personal contact. Research that Debra Meyerson, Karl Weick, and I did on what we call swift trust showed that high levels of trust often come from very depersonalized interactions; in fact, personal relations sometimes get in the way of trust. An important element of swift trust is the presence of clear and compelling roles.

Deep trust in a role, we found, can be a substitute for personal experience with an individual. Role-based trust is trust in the system that selects and trains the individual. But flawed or not, in deciding whom to trust we still need to take the roles people play into account. We worry about the trustworthiness of a prospective financial adviser, so we do our due diligence. They let their vigilance lapse. The Madoff scandal is a good example. Many people who invested their life savings with Bernie Madoff initially did their due diligence.

I teach philosophy and literature—and so it happened. The challenge in revisiting trust is that it requires questioning the people we trust, which is psychologically uncomfortable. But when it comes to situations in which our physical, mental, or financial security is on the line, our trust must be tempered by a sustained, disciplined ambivalence. Our predisposition to trust has been an important survival skill for young children and, indeed, for us as a species. Recent evidence, moreover, shows that trust plays a critical role in the economic and social vitality of nations, further affirming its fundamental value.

To safely reap the full benefits of trust, therefore, we must learn to temper it. The seven rules I offer here by no means represent a complete primer on how to trust judiciously. The science of trust is also much less complete than we would like, although it is growing rapidly as neuroeconomists, behavioral economists, and psychologists use powerful new techniques such as brain imaging and agent modeling to discover more about how we make judgments about whom to trust and when.

But for all their shortcomings, these rules will help you make a good start on what will be a lifelong process of learning how to trust wisely and well. You have 1 free article s left this month.

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Reprint: RH Will we ever learn? Trust is essential for business and economic success. In evolution, trust served humans well because it increased the chances that vulnerable infants would survive. Our body chemistry rewards us for trusting, and we quickly decide to trust others on the basis of simple surface cues such as their physical similarity to us.

Our readiness to trust makes us likely to make mistakes. At the individual level, though, misplaced trust can get us into trouble. The Idea in Practice To trust wisely, we need to readjust our mind-set and behaviorial habits, following seven basic rules. Rule 1: Know yourself. If you tend to trust the wrong people, you must work on interpreting the cues you receive. Rule 2: Start small. Measured trust begins with small acts that foster reciprocity. A good example of the dynamic was displayed by Hewlett-Packard in the early s.

Management allowed engineers to take equipment home whenever they needed to, without having to go through a lot of red tape. Rule 3: Write an escape clause. But, more often than not, people feel that their distrust is not safe to share. The hiddenness and personal nature of trust can be a problem for relationships, teams or organizations. How can you fix something that is not expressed or shared?

How do you even know that trust is lost? Paradoxically, there must be at least a little trust in order to discuss its lack and make attempts to rebuild it, while if the loss of trust remains unaddressed, the relationship will grow more and more distant. Trust is often related to leadership and power, but it is not a given. To be effective, a leader must earn the trust of his or her constituents to ensure their participation and allegiance.

Yet even trust that is earned can be quickly lost and cannot be quickly regained. If members of a team or relationship lose trust in each other, it takes a great deal of work to restore it. People are not quick to reinvest in a relationship where trust has been broken. They generally move on. Since trust is so important in both working and personal relationships, how can we monitor it, build upon it and heal it when it becomes frayed?

It is useful to view trust as a natural response to certain qualities in a person, group or organization, and the absence of these qualities will diminish the level of trust. These qualities are:. We all have a long list! But walling ourselves off from each other only perpetuates the problem—this does not keep us safe; it keeps us lonely. What can you do to get over trust issues? You can make an informed decision and go for it.

That's right. Jump in and have faith. When you decide to trust someone, it means that you believe in that person's integrity. Trusting is knowing that ultimately this person's intentions are good. And it also means that you know that they are going to make mistakes. But building a strong relationship is possible. When we're scared, we make mistakes.

By mistakes I mean we hurt others, we don't act in our highest integrity. Fear makes us act out. And if you're being honest with yourself , you know that you've likely done this too. It's unfortunate but true. If we could collectively realize this and approach others and ourselves with compassion when we are acting out, rather than condemnation, this world would be a completely different place—and our relationships would definitely be filled with a lot more trust.

If we trust ourselves first and foremost , it allows us to deal with the mistakes of others with a little more grace and ease. If you know that no matter what—no matter what your partner does, no matter what challenges arise—you are going to be OK, then trusting is going to be easier to do. You recognize that trust isn't about never feeling another negative emotion again; it's about knowing that you can handle anything that comes your way.

That will build trust. Trusting is not about choosing the right person. I mean, it is a choice, so try not to choose blindly. But remember, you are not signing up to be in a relationship with a robot—you are signing up to be with another human being. What you are saying when you choose to trust someone is, "I know that deep down you are a good person with good intentions.

And I know that ultimately, my well-being is up to me. This is a big statement—a real commitment. If we believe that people are, in general, good and do not seek to deceive others, then we are more likely to trust them. Values are the rules that tell us what is right and wrong, what we should and should not do, what is more important and less important.

They often are concerned with how we behave in relationships with other people. Mental models are the complex maps we make of the world and which we then use to interpret what is going on around us.

They help us predict what will happen and hence keep control of our personal world. We have mental models of how we and others work in Goals are the targets we set ourselves to achieve, based on our models of both the world and ourselves, and hence what we believe is possible to achieve.

If my goals and yours are the same, then it is easier to trust that you will act to help me, because it is in your interests too. External factors Appearances: When people have the same outer accoutrements of living as us, from cars to clothes, we tend to translate this outer appearance into an assumption that the inner beliefs, etc. Behaviours: We can easily observe how the other person acts, perhaps in situations which do not require significant trust to be given.

From both direct experience and from what other people tell us about them, we can build up a picture and judge from this how much we have in common. Experiences: Where we have had common experiences, from working together on the same project to going to the same university in different decades, having an experience in common is likely to make us feel some sense of camaraderie, enabling at least a first level of comfortable conversation.

Preferences: When the other person prefers the same music as us and has the same biases, whether it be religious, political or otherwise, we feel more like them and consequently believe that they are more like us.

Contextual factors Culture: Cultural contexts include being at work, being at home and being on the golf course. In each situation, there are different cultural rules about trust. Concern We can evaluate how people will treat our vulnerabilities by evaluating the concern they show, both for other people and for ourselves. Care Someone who clearly cares for us, taking positive steps to help and offering emotional support as needed, is someone we will quickly conclude that we can trust.

Power Where the other person has power to hurt us, but does not, then we may conclude that they are trustworthy. Reciprocity We can check their fairness in exchanges by determining the overall value balance.