The smart move: We learn more by trusting than by not trusting

an article by Hugo Mercier published in AEON [republished in the Big Think blog]


Members of the Castellers de Barcelona build a human tower in Tarragona, Spain, October 2007. Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty 

We all know people who have suffered by trusting too much: scammed customers, jilted lovers, shunned friends. Indeed, most of us have been burned by misplaced trust.

These personal and vicarious experiences lead us to believe that people are too trusting, often verging on gullibility.

In fact, we don't trust enough.

Take data about trust in the United States (the same would be true in most wealthy democratic countries at least). Interpersonal trust, a measure of whether people think others are in general trustworthy, is at its lowest in nearly 50 years. Yet it is unlikely that people are any less trustworthy than before: the massive drop in crime over the past decades suggests the opposite. Trust in the media is also at bottom levels, even though mainstream media outlets have an impressive (if not unblemished) record of accuracy.

Meanwhile, trust in science has held up comparatively well, with most people trusting scientists most of the time; still, in some areas at least, from climate change to vaccination, a share of the population doesn't trust science enough – with devastating consequences.

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