Once I wrote in a blog: “Trust is relying on the
reliability of another, for example that she or he will do what s/he says,
without having any explicit guarantee that the other will really carry out what
s/he is expected to do.” Of course, there are many rules and regulations in society
that prescribe what to do or not to do in certain situations and that can and
will be enforced when they are broken. Nevertheless we need trust, for in
practice not all rules and regulations are enforced or the enforcement is so
complicated that it is better to avoid it. Moreover, not everything can be
regulated. So, in order to make that social and individual relations go
smoothly we need trust. From that perspective trust is the lubricant for
society.
The basis of trust is often quite vague. Usually it is
not more than trustworthy behaviour in the past by the person you trust; his or
her “trustworthy” appearance; sweet-talk or a good story that someone tells you
in order to convince you of his trustworthiness; and so on. In fact, trust
rests on trust till the opposite has become clear. In old films it is so
simple: scoundrels look like scoundrels and good guys or girls look like good
guys or girls and they behave that way. But, alas, reality is not that simple,
although many people (unconsciously) think so as psychological tests show:
Being a good-looking person is an asset in order to get things done, for being
good-looking and being considered trustworthy are things that tend to go
together.
Several factors can undermine trust. So the more rules
and regulations there are in social life the less trust there is. The reason is
that they subvert intrinsic motivation and make people calculating, often at
the cost of others. Another trust undermining factor is – it’s clear – known
untrustworthy behaviour in the past, like not keeping one’s appointments. A
third factor is not correcting mistakes when others are involved especially if
the person who made the mistake acknowledges having made the mistake. A fourth
trust undermining factor I want to mention is money: Also when money is
involved in executing an agreement or a promise, people tend to become more
calculating. Money put relations on a business footing and then people behave
accordingly.
And there is corruption. Not only is it so that
corruption makes that relations become a matter of tit-for-tat or that it can
lead to clientelism. It leads also to exclusion of individuals and groups from
social favours or things they need in case they do not have the money for
paying bribes or do not have the relations needed for getting things done.
Corruption leads to social inequality and in the worst case to violence as
well. That’s why already Montaigne protested against the corruption he saw around
him. But since corruption cannot be practised openly, corrupt people try to prevent
that they are exposed as corrupt, often by corrupt means, or, if they are
politicians, by moulding the law to their will and by limiting the freedom of
the press or the freedom of demonstration. Just these days again, we see this
in Turkey by the arrest of journalists or in Spain, where the government wants
to make stricter laws for demonstrations (just now that the governing Partido
Popular – “People’s Party”– is involved in so many corruption affairs).
These are only some factors that undermine trust,
for there are many more. Trust looks often like a concept escaped from a fairy
tale. Isn’t it so that in the end nobody can be trusted and that, in the end,
we have to behave as if it doesn’t exist? That human relationships are actually
not more than a kind of business? Maybe they are, but when thinking of trust
and untrustworthiness, the words of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) certainly apply
that “Multis minatur, qui uni facit injuriam”, or in English: “He that injures
one threatens many”. Untrustworthiness destabilizes society. Judge yourself and
take a look at this website, for instance, where the 2014 Corruption Perception
Index is presented: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results
.
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