[Music]
when I think about trust I imagine a
person falling backwards into the arms
of others
you just had a curiosity how many of you
have done something like this as far as
a man more than a half of you looks like
awesome I also think about someone who’s
being helped to do something difficult
maybe even dangerous like this person at
the edge of Victoria Falls now I think
that the two people featured in these
photographs share a number of things in
common at the moment that these photos
were taken I think that each person was
feeling vulnerable maybe even a little
scared I also think that each person had
an expectation that others were acting
to keep them safe and that when this was
all over everything would be okay
well that syncs up pretty well with Hell
Trust is defined in the psychological
literature
Denise verso and her colleagues define
trust as a psychological state
comprising the intention to accept the
vulnerability based upon positive
expectations of the intentions or
behavior of another that’s a mouthful
another way to think about it is trust
is the expectation that other people’s
future actions will safeguard our
interests Trust is a critical ingredient
to a successful high functioning
community it affects how we approach our
personal relationships it’s important
for our economy when Trust is high
business can be conducted more cost
effectively and efficiently and it’s
central to our democracy each time we
vote we’re sharing a significant portion
of our personal political power with
those who we expect to represent our
interests as a social psychologist the
concept of trust is interested to me for
a long time and as someone who asks
questions for a living I knew that I
could design a research study that would
help us to better understand what trust
looks like here in central Ohio and
that’s how I found myself on my path to
the Columbus trust study which I’ll tell
you more about in a moment now one of
the first researchers to study Trust was
the Cornell University professor named
Morris Rosenberg in 1956 he created a
set of quest
that measured what he called faith in
people a few years later a national
study called the General Social Survey
took some of those questions and began
asking them of representative samples of
Americans here’s one of those questions
generally speaking would you say that
most people can be trusted or that you
can’t be too careful in dealing with
people now this question has been asked
about every two years since 1972 and
unfortunately the long-term trend over
time does not look good in the early 70s
about half of Americans said most people
can be trusted a percentage that’s
declined to less than a third in 2016
and if you look at research from other
research organizations like Gallup
you’ll see a similar story over a
similar time period fewer Americans have
trust or confidence in our political
leaders fewer Americans have trust or
confidence in mass media’s ability to
collect and communicate information and
fewer Americans have trust or confidence
in one another when it comes to making
important political decisions about two
years ago my colleague Brian Havilland
and I were talking about these national
trends and the declining notion of trust
and we wondered what does trust look
like here in central Ohio to what extent
do we have faith in people so my
research firm his marketing firm we
partnered together we launched the
Columbus trial study earlier this year
we randomly sampled thousands of
households from across Franklin County
over the summer we sent them multiple
mailings inviting them to participate in
the survey which they could do either
online or by completing a hard copy of a
survey questionnaire that we’d mailed to
their home and here’s what we found
overall we see that nearly half of the
people in our community say most people
can be trusted a percentage that’s
significantly greater than what we see
either across the nation or across the
Midwest we also saw that trust was
related to some important demographic
variables like education those with more
formal education were more likely to say
most people can be trusted we also saw a
gender effect males were more likely
than females to say
most people can be trusted I know all
right trust me is there research in
addition to looking at what trust looked
like across the community I was also
curious about what it might look like
within the community neighborhood the
neighborhood
zip code a zip code so we mapped our
data this map here shows you the major
zip code areas around the county the
areas that are shaded in a dark blue our
areas were a greater percentage of the
people in our survey said most people
can be trusted and the areas that are
look shady more lightly or white our
areas in which a fewer percentage a
smaller percentage of people said most
people can be trusted and as you can see
Trust is not distributed equally around
our community now whether you look at
education or gender or even where you
live it’s clear that your life
experience plays an important role in
determining how or whether you trust
diving into all the socio-economic
factors that could lead to trust could
probably be its own TED talk
but today considering that we live what
seems to be in an increasingly divided
society I’d like to focus on one other
aspect of the Columbus trust study that
has me really excited because I think it
has the potential to help us move
forward as a community in the right
direction and I’m talking about the link
that we see between trust and community
engagement in our study we saw that the
majority of people who said most people
can be trusted also report volunteering
some of their time in a typical month
with a nonprofit civic or religious
organization what’s more we see that
those people who say most people can be
trusted also volunteer more of their
time in a typical month compared to
those who say you can’t be too careful
now our data don’t let us say that more
Trust leads to more volunteering or more
volunteering leads to more trust it’s
possible that both of those
interpretations are correct as a matter
of fact if you go back and look at what
Robert Putnam wrote in his popular book
Bowling Alone he said that social trust
honesty and civic engagement they’re all
mutually reinforcing and I think he’s
right for me the key takeaway here
is that if we were to act in ways that
either increase our general positive
view of others or increase our
engagement with the community other
positive outcomes are likely to result
we know that Trust is born when we allow
ourselves to be vulnerable to others who
we expect to protect our interests
however we’ve seen that not everyone is
sharing in the same level of trust
around the community and across the
nation it seems that were becoming more
and more closed off from one another so
what can we possibly do to build trust
some clues to that answer might lie in
the academic research literature on this
topic researchers who study trusts and
laboratory settings often use a method
called the trust game and this game
involves two people exchanging money
back and forth so there’s some
real-world stakes here and what they
found is that people who play this game
more frequently with one another are
more likely to show trusting behaviors
with one another this is probably
because they’re increasing the amount of
information they have about how other
people are likely to act in the future
and that lets them better predict the
future to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway
the best way to find out if you can
trust somebody is to trust them being
vulnerable with positive expectations is
a critical necessary condition for the
creation of trust so I’d like to
challenge you to share more of your time
effort and expertise with people in the
community who are unfamiliar to you get
or share similar goals or interests and
when you’re faced by a situation that
asks for you to become vulnerable to
someone else to take that risk in
addition to building a stronger
community you may find yourself trust in
others a little bit more thank you
you
when I think about trust I imagine a
person falling backwards into the arms
of others
you just had a curiosity how many of you
have done something like this as far as
a man more than a half of you looks like
awesome I also think about someone who’s
being helped to do something difficult
maybe even dangerous like this person at
the edge of Victoria Falls now I think
that the two people featured in these
photographs share a number of things in
common at the moment that these photos
were taken I think that each person was
feeling vulnerable maybe even a little
scared I also think that each person had
an expectation that others were acting
to keep them safe and that when this was
all over everything would be okay
well that syncs up pretty well with Hell
Trust is defined in the psychological
literature
Denise verso and her colleagues define
trust as a psychological state
comprising the intention to accept the
vulnerability based upon positive
expectations of the intentions or
behavior of another that’s a mouthful
another way to think about it is trust
is the expectation that other people’s
future actions will safeguard our
interests Trust is a critical ingredient
to a successful high functioning
community it affects how we approach our
personal relationships it’s important
for our economy when Trust is high
business can be conducted more cost
effectively and efficiently and it’s
central to our democracy each time we
vote we’re sharing a significant portion
of our personal political power with
those who we expect to represent our
interests as a social psychologist the
concept of trust is interested to me for
a long time and as someone who asks
questions for a living I knew that I
could design a research study that would
help us to better understand what trust
looks like here in central Ohio and
that’s how I found myself on my path to
the Columbus trust study which I’ll tell
you more about in a moment now one of
the first researchers to study Trust was
the Cornell University professor named
Morris Rosenberg in 1956 he created a
set of quest
that measured what he called faith in
people a few years later a national
study called the General Social Survey
took some of those questions and began
asking them of representative samples of
Americans here’s one of those questions
generally speaking would you say that
most people can be trusted or that you
can’t be too careful in dealing with
people now this question has been asked
about every two years since 1972 and
unfortunately the long-term trend over
time does not look good in the early 70s
about half of Americans said most people
can be trusted a percentage that’s
declined to less than a third in 2016
and if you look at research from other
research organizations like Gallup
you’ll see a similar story over a
similar time period fewer Americans have
trust or confidence in our political
leaders fewer Americans have trust or
confidence in mass media’s ability to
collect and communicate information and
fewer Americans have trust or confidence
in one another when it comes to making
important political decisions about two
years ago my colleague Brian Havilland
and I were talking about these national
trends and the declining notion of trust
and we wondered what does trust look
like here in central Ohio to what extent
do we have faith in people so my
research firm his marketing firm we
partnered together we launched the
Columbus trial study earlier this year
we randomly sampled thousands of
households from across Franklin County
over the summer we sent them multiple
mailings inviting them to participate in
the survey which they could do either
online or by completing a hard copy of a
survey questionnaire that we’d mailed to
their home and here’s what we found
overall we see that nearly half of the
people in our community say most people
can be trusted a percentage that’s
significantly greater than what we see
either across the nation or across the
Midwest we also saw that trust was
related to some important demographic
variables like education those with more
formal education were more likely to say
most people can be trusted we also saw a
gender effect males were more likely
than females to say
most people can be trusted I know all
right trust me is there research in
addition to looking at what trust looked
like across the community I was also
curious about what it might look like
within the community neighborhood the
neighborhood
zip code a zip code so we mapped our
data this map here shows you the major
zip code areas around the county the
areas that are shaded in a dark blue our
areas were a greater percentage of the
people in our survey said most people
can be trusted and the areas that are
look shady more lightly or white our
areas in which a fewer percentage a
smaller percentage of people said most
people can be trusted and as you can see
Trust is not distributed equally around
our community now whether you look at
education or gender or even where you
live it’s clear that your life
experience plays an important role in
determining how or whether you trust
diving into all the socio-economic
factors that could lead to trust could
probably be its own TED talk
but today considering that we live what
seems to be in an increasingly divided
society I’d like to focus on one other
aspect of the Columbus trust study that
has me really excited because I think it
has the potential to help us move
forward as a community in the right
direction and I’m talking about the link
that we see between trust and community
engagement in our study we saw that the
majority of people who said most people
can be trusted also report volunteering
some of their time in a typical month
with a nonprofit civic or religious
organization what’s more we see that
those people who say most people can be
trusted also volunteer more of their
time in a typical month compared to
those who say you can’t be too careful
now our data don’t let us say that more
Trust leads to more volunteering or more
volunteering leads to more trust it’s
possible that both of those
interpretations are correct as a matter
of fact if you go back and look at what
Robert Putnam wrote in his popular book
Bowling Alone he said that social trust
honesty and civic engagement they’re all
mutually reinforcing and I think he’s
right for me the key takeaway here
is that if we were to act in ways that
either increase our general positive
view of others or increase our
engagement with the community other
positive outcomes are likely to result
we know that Trust is born when we allow
ourselves to be vulnerable to others who
we expect to protect our interests
however we’ve seen that not everyone is
sharing in the same level of trust
around the community and across the
nation it seems that were becoming more
and more closed off from one another so
what can we possibly do to build trust
some clues to that answer might lie in
the academic research literature on this
topic researchers who study trusts and
laboratory settings often use a method
called the trust game and this game
involves two people exchanging money
back and forth so there’s some
real-world stakes here and what they
found is that people who play this game
more frequently with one another are
more likely to show trusting behaviors
with one another this is probably
because they’re increasing the amount of
information they have about how other
people are likely to act in the future
and that lets them better predict the
future to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway
the best way to find out if you can
trust somebody is to trust them being
vulnerable with positive expectations is
a critical necessary condition for the
creation of trust so I’d like to
challenge you to share more of your time
effort and expertise with people in the
community who are unfamiliar to you get
or share similar goals or interests and
when you’re faced by a situation that
asks for you to become vulnerable to
someone else to take that risk in
addition to building a stronger
community you may find yourself trust in
others a little bit more thank you
you
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