The Psychology of Trust | Anne Böckler-Raettig | TEDxFrankfurt

Transcriber: Ivana Krivokuća Reviewer: Mile Živković As a child, I remember playing outside and out of my parents' sight for hours. The neighbors' children, my little brother and I, would climb trees in the forest, build hideouts, wade in the river, make new friends, and only much later did I realize how much

trust

this must have required in my parents' family. . side. Trust the people we would meet,

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the older kids, but trust me too. I often wondered if and how his confidence possibly influenced me. Then I grew up, became a cognitive psychologist and now research the processes that allow us humans to coordinate and cooperate with each other.

And again I look at trust and I noticed that trust is really a key component in our social life. I want to share with you insights from

psychology

, social neuroscience, and behavioral economics to support my three favorite points about trust. It's just that trust can be difficult. Trust is dynamic and, above all, it is essential. Especially when we don't know people well, when we meet strangers for the first time, deciding who to trust can be really challenging. However, we humans often make this decision within a few hundred milliseconds. But on what do we base this important decision?

Well, one signal that we use to decide whether or not to trust someone is their faces, their facial features. Let me show you two examples. Which of these two guys would you rather trust? Who chooses the one on the left? Rise your hand. Who chooses the right one? Some. Yes. Your vote nicely reflects

psychology

findings showing that people largely tend to agree about who seems trustworthy and who doesn't. It's the areas around the eyes, the areas around the mouth that are relevant here. But is the guy on the left really more trustworthy? No. So far, there is no conclusive evidence that people with trustworthy faces also behave in a more trustworthy m

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What else do we use? Well, when we meet people for the first time, we look for signs of authority, of competence. We tend to listen and obey people who, for example, are dressed like that, much more than we do to people who are dressed like that. Surely you all know about the famous Milgram experiments, which were carried out in the 60s. In these experiments, normal people, like you and me, were invited to a laboratory and asked to punish students for not remembering words correctly. Punishment was to be administered through electric shocks. Of course, the students did not actually receive these shocks, but the participants certainly believed so.

A surprising number of people, like you and me, punished these students by administering lethal and fatal electrical stimulation. That's the critical point: They did it especially when the instructor, the one who ordered them to punish the students, displayed these displays of authority and competence, like a white lab coat. I think this shows that trusting others simply based on whether they seem competent or authoritative can have truly devastating consequences. Additionally, when we meet other people for the first time, we tend to listen a lot to what others have to say about them. Your reputation. In fact, the prior information we have about another person can have such a strong influence on our expectations that we are completely unaware of how that person actually behaves.

So we ignore someone's trustworthy behavior toward us when we already expect him to be untrustworthy. I think these examples show that these signs of trustworthiness—what someone's face looks like, someone's clothes, someone's reputation—these signs of trustworthiness are not that reliable in and of themselves. This makes deciding who to trust difficult, because we have to strive not to trust those who may not be as trustworthy as they seem, and equally important, we have to strive not to deprive our trust of those who deserve it. but it may not seem like it. Therefore, we should not judge strangers too quickly.

These were situations in which we do not know others well. But even after initiating an interaction, starting a relationship with someone, trust is not something we can simply activate. It is an inherently continuous, interactive and dynamic process. Psychologists and behavioral economists have studied trust for many decades. They have used very simple paradigms in which trust is operationalized, it is measured as an investment. An investment of time, effort or money. I will show you a very simple paradigm. In this paradigm, in this task, you have two people: person A and person B; Let's call them Alice and Bella.

They do not know each other, they are simply connected through an Internet platform. They may see each other's photo and enter into a very simple, formalized interaction in which one of them, Alice, has a certain amount of money. Let's say Alice has 100 euros and now she can choose how much she wants to invest in Bella. Let's say she chooses 60 euros. Now comes the critical part of this paradigm: this amount is then tripled. Bella then receives three times the amount Alice entrusted her with. Now it's Bella's turn. Bella can decide how much she wants to give back to Alice.

If she chooses 90 euros, Bella has 90 euros left and Alice 130 euros. That means that if Alice trusts and Bella reciprocates, they will both end up with more than they had before. Both benefit. Especially when this interaction continues over several rounds, this allows us to really observe the development, dynamics of trust, and trust-based relationships. This has yielded some really interesting findings. For example, in some people, in some groups, trust declines rapidly. Cooperation breaks down, no one wins, everyone is dissatisfied. On the contrary, in other groups, other people manage to establish stable, functional and mutually beneficial relationships. Everyone wins and everyone is happy.

What is the difference? What do those who are successful do differently? Well, one thing that those who manage to establish long-term relationships based on trust do differently is forgive. I think in most relationships there comes a point where the other person doesn't behave the way we expect. For example, and this might be a little disappointing, because Bella didn't reciprocate as much as Alice had hoped. This may be a misunderstanding, it may be mockery, it may be an active abuse of trust. In order for the cooperation not to break down, Alice needs to do something. Alice needs to get over her uncertainty, even her anger, and give Bella a second chance.

She needs to trust and invest in Bella again. Maybe not five or six times, but once or twice. In fact, that's what groups that manage to establish mutually beneficial relationships do differently. On the other person's side, Bella, there may be situations where Bella realizes: "Alice doesn't seem to trust me as much anymore. Alice doesn't invest in me as much anymore." There's also something Bella can do. Bella can actively repair her relationship by convincing Alice to trust her again. She is able to convince Alice to trust her again by especially reciprocating for a few rounds. So, we have to forgive, we have to convince others to trust us again, and how do we do it?

There is a cognitive skill that is really crucial for these behaviors and that is perspective taking or theory of mind. We need to take the other's perspective, put ourselves in their place, that is why we need to think about what the other wants, feels, plans, believes or knows. We can only forgive others if we think about it: "Well, maybe there are different reasons why the other person behaved the way she did." Furthermore, to convince others to trust us again, we must consider: "Well, yes, maybe the other person has lost trust in us." Not surprisingly, new scientific findings show that the areas of the brain that are involved in the process of taking the perspective of others are also really important during trust-based interactions.

So, all in all, trust is not something we can simply activate. Trust is an inherently dynamic process. Saying “I trust you” or “Trust me” is not the end of the story; It's actually just the beginning. Until now, it probably seems to you that trust is a business that requires a lot of effort. We need to get over these unreliable signals of trustworthiness that I talked about at the beginning, and we need to think about what others are thinking and that all sounds pretty exhausting. But - and this is the last point - it is really necessary.

Trust is indispensable, and trust isn't really something that's just nice to have; It's not the icing on the cake. I think trust is the spice of our social dinner, really. If you think for a moment about these very simple interactions that I just showed you, but also if you think about the interaction that you have and the relationships that you form, it becomes evident that without an initial leap of faith, without trust, without cooperation, without interactions . , relationships could never be established based on trust. A very moving example from the animal kingdom is that of vampire bats.

These little creatures need to be fed every night or at most every other night, otherwise they starve. However, every night up to 30% of them do not get food. It would be quite tragic if they didn't have specific mutual friendships with other bats, in which food is shared. If a bat doesn't catch anything, it can go to its friend and it regurgitates blood. That's pretty gross, but it's a lifesaver. This favor is later reciprocated when the other bat didn't catch anything. The critical point is that without an initial leap of faith, without an initial incident of one bat sharing with the other, this life-saving interaction or reciprocal relationship could never have been established.

We need trust to establish relationships. What other thing? Another benefit of trust is that we need it to recognize signs of distrust. That sounds funny at first. However, it seems, and this is what psychological research suggests, that people who tend to trust others less - and this is symbolized by the woman in the picture who expects nothing good from the guy with flowers - people who Those who expect the worst from others are also less able to recognize when others are hurt or angry. They do not recognize signs of mistrust and, as a result, are less able and willing to repair relationships and convince others to trust them again.

As a result, their cooperation breaks down more quickly. A good example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As strange as it may seem, we need to trust, we need to have confidence to recognize mistrust and then repair relationships. The last point is as simple as it is nice. We really enjoy that you trust us. When other people trust us, it makes us feel good; It makes us feel good about ourselves. And initial evidence from new scientific studies shows that our brains seem to inherently reward us for trusting ourselves. Thats not all. Coming full circle, so to speak, our brain not only rewards us for being trustworthy, but also for being trustworthy.

We really enjoy behaving reliably. We do not want to violate the trust of others; We want to reciprocate, to do good to others. Strong preferences for being reliable and trustworthy are deeply ingrained in us. Overall, in addition to being a difficult business at times and very dynamic, trust is truly essential. We need trust to establish, maintain and repair relationships. Trust empowers us and we can empower others by trusting them. This brings me back to the initial example of my parents and them letting me play outside and out of their sight. Perhaps inspired by vampire bats, here they are dressed as vampires, and that was a long time ago.

I think they allowed a lot of good things to happen by trusting me to play out of their sight. By meeting new children, I was able to learn that not everyone is as trustworthy or not as trustworthy as they seem, I was able to learn that maintaining relationships requires a lot of forgiving and being forgiven. By trusting myself I think they taught me to trust others and to trust myself. It is a great gift that I hope to pass on to my children one day. Thank you. (Applause)