It’s often said that we’re living through “an age of declining trust.” Over the last few decades, researchers have tracked the public’s loss of trust in political institutions, in scientists and scientific bodies, in public health agencies, and even their local neighborhoods and communities.

There’s also been much discussion over how to fix this crisis of trust. But we can’t really do that unless we have a good understanding of what trust is, what it does, where it comes from, and how it’s established in the first place.

Questions such as these are central to the work we do at Knology. Over the years, we’ve published multiple peer-reviewed studies and critical reflections on trust, have hosted a conference aimed at furthering understanding of the dynamics of trust and trustworthiness, and have offered partners practical advice on how to build trust with their audiences. To provide a workable foundation for addressing any number of concerns related to trust, in what follows, we summarize some of our key findings related to this important topic.

What is trust?

There are many definitions of trust. But at its most basic level, trust is the willingness to take a risk. When you trust someone or something, you’re saying that you’re willing to put yourself and your wellbeing in the hands of another. What makes this risky is the fact that trust can sometimes lead to dependence – which opens the doors to subjugation or exploitation.

What does trust do, and what is it good for?

Trust is how we deal with our vulnerabilities – our inability to survive without the help of others. It’s a default condition, and is essential for human functioning. Almost everything we do on a day-to-day basis requires trust. Consider the following examples:

• When we decide to dine at a restaurant, we do so because we trust that the food we’re going to be served won’t poison us;
• When we go to our jobs, we do so because we trust that our employer will pay us for our work;
• When we decide to have children, we do so because we trust that other people (family, friends, neighbors, teachers, etc.) will be there to help us raise them; and
• When those of us who decided to have children drop off those children at school, we trust that they will come home whole and a little more knowledgeable about the world into which they continuously grow.

One implication of this is that trust is extremely helpful when it comes to making decisions. It’s what convinces us that certain things are worth the risk.

Where does trust come from, and how is it established?

Trust comes from observing other people and their behavior. It has two main sources.

Identity-Based Trust

This results from feelings of attraction to and affinity with others. If someone feels familiar to you, or if you feel you have common ground with them, then there’s a basis for establishing identity-based trust in them. This kind of trust is useful in situations where we’re trying to resolve approach / avoidance questions. Consider the following scenario:

You’re driving down the highway when suddenly your car breaks down. As you consider what to do, another driver pulls over and offers a ride to the nearest service station. Do you accept their offer, or wave them off in the hopes of finding other help?

To answer that question, we often ask ourselves other questions – for example, “Does this person appear friendly?” “Are they like me?” or “Do I already have some kind of attachment to them?” If we answer “yes” to these questions, then we’ve established identity-based trust.

Experiential Trust

This kind of trust is established through assessment of another’s behaviors. If your observations of and interactions with someone have been positive and led to good outcomes, then it’s likely you’ll develop experiential trust in them. This kind of trust is a judgment – one that’s constantly being updated as we receive new information. Consider the following scenario:

You and your friend decide to dine out at your favorite seafood restaurant, where you’ve always enjoyed the food. But after returning home, you get sick from a bad oyster. The next week, your friend asks if you want to eat there again. Do you agree, or suggest an alternative restaurant instead?

To answer this question, we’ll turn to information we’ve acquired since our previous visit – for example, “Did the restaurant owner admit their mistake, and try to make amends?” If they initiate a repair and reconciliation process, they can restore the initial trust we placed in them. If so, we may be ready to re-establish our experience-based trust in them.

What explains the crisis of trust?

In addition to identity-based trust and experiential trust, there’s a third kind of trust called contractual trust. One might term this the “call the police” option – it’s a higher authority we call upon when we’ve decided that a problem is too hard or thorny to deal with ourselves, or when we don’t trust each other enough to resolve things. Contractual trust works so long as we trust these authorities – or at least, so long as the systems we’ve created for keeping them accountable to us actually do so. But if that social contract between people and authorities is broken, trust can easily turn into distrust.

That’s what we’re seeing across so much of society today – particularly in regards to the crisis of institutional trust. For so long, institutions have been so reliant on contractual trust that they’ve forgotten that in order to function, this has to be built on a foundation of experiential trust. When their trustworthiness is called into question, they tend to invoke the social contract, only to find that the public no longer feels that this is meeting their needs. At this point, the need to re-earn trust emerges, but lots of institutions don’t really know how to do this. And unfortunately, part of what prevents them from becoming more trustworthy are the norms that limit their behavior.

How can trust be restored?

Trust is a default until it’s broken. Once broken, it can be hard to repair. When attempting to do so, it’s helpful to think about the criteria we use to judge how trustworthy others are. These include:

• Competence – our perception of another’s abilities (i.e., how knowledgeable, capable, and skillful they are);
• Reliability – our perception of another’s dependability (i.e., whether they can competently meet our expectations on a regular basis);
• Sincerity – our perception of another’s honesty (i.e., their willingness to tell the truth about what they know or what they can do);
• Benevolence – our perception of whether another is looking out for our wellbeing (i.e., whether their actions demonstrate compassion, empathy, and care); and
• Integrity – our perception of how equitably another is applying their principles (i.e., whether they display nepotism or other kinds of in-group favoritism).

When considering these criteria, it’s important to understand that trustworthiness isn’t just the sum of our perceptions of another’s competence, reliability, sincerity, benevolence, and integrity. It’s a lot more complicated than that

For example, consider a situation where a politician hires a relative for a position in their office. That action might demonstrate lots of benevolence (because they’re looking out for the relative’s wellbeing and attempting to care for them) but also reveal a lack of integrity (because in passing over other qualified candidates, they’re not treating everyone equally).

Or, to take another example, think of a dinner guest who compliments a far from tasty meal offered by their hosts. The guest is being insincere but also benevolent. If the host discovers the untruth, they might judge their guest as untrustworthy because of the deception. But the host might equally well think that, despite the insincerity, the benevolence shown to them serves as evidence of the guest’s trustworthiness.

Let’s Put it to Work!

As humans, we’re hardwired for trust. Yet even though trust is vital to our survival, it’s not static.

It’s an ongoing process, and establishing it often takes time and effort. Here are some practical tips for thinking about trust and the role it plays in our lives.

• When determining how much trust we’re putting in others, our goal should be to avoid complete dependence on them, and to create a reciprocal relationship with them that prevents either side from gaining too much power.
• Identity-based trust makes it possible for us to approach others, but if this is the only kind of trust we have in another, then we should reconsider how trustworthy they actually are.
• Assessments of trustworthiness are context-dependent. In any given situation, the path to trustworthiness can be established (and re-established) even if some of these criteria seem fuzzy or absent.

About this Article

Want to learn more about this topic? See our research on why benevolence is key to our perceptions of trustworthiness, our research into how people assess the trustworthiness of zoos and aquariums, a conversation about the role of trust in public health, some findings pertaining to the role of partnerships in trust-building, and our thoughts about how moral motives factor into considerations of trust and trustworthiness.

Photo by Kamil Pietrzak @ Unsplash