The Science of Trust

Every single day, we place our trust in countless strangers, usually without giving it a second thought. We eat food prepared by people we have never met, ride in vehicles driven by others, and hand over money in exchange for nothing more than a promise. Without a basic level of trust, modern life would quickly grind to a halt. For this reason, researchers from economics, psychology, and biology have all become deeply interested in how trust （ 1 ）, and in why people are willing to extend it to others at all.

One common way to study trust in the laboratory is a simple experiment called the "trust game." One player is given a sum of money and can choose to send some of it to a second player, knowing that the amount will be multiplied along the way. The second player then decides how much, if anything, to send back. Surprisingly, most first players send a substantial sum, and most receivers do choose to return a fair share. （ 2 ） acting on pure self-interest, in other words, people strongly tend to reward those who have chosen to trust them.

Trust, however, is far easier to destroy than it is to build. A single act of betrayal can undo a relationship that took many years to develop, and once it is lost, trust is usually very slow to return. （ 3 ）, studies carried out across many different countries suggest that societies in which people generally trust one another tend to be both wealthier and happier than those in which they do not. Building and protecting trust, researchers conclude, is not a soft or sentimental ideal but a genuinely practical foundation of a successful society.