Trust is an emotion not a judgement
It is about feeling comfortable
When we talk about trusting someone we almost always have a very rational argument based on evidence as to why. But the problem is that any such rational analysis of the facts is not actually the driver of our trust.
This is because trust is an emotion not a judgement.
To be sure, if there is a consistent set of data demonstrating that a particular person tends to act in a way that is aligned with our interests, we definitely feel that we can trust that person. However that’s exactly the right description, we “feel” that we can trust that person.
Though the facts and data that show the person is telling the truth or is reliable may be objectively correct, the ultimate decision is one of comfort not analysis.
Feeling comfortable with that person could come about due to various non objective factors like the person’s attractiveness, their familiarity, their similarity to ourselves, their affiliation with a shared group or dogma, etc. Things that make us feel more warmly towards that person but which are not reliable indicators that a person is actually trustworthy
In fact, the more emotional we feel, the less our actual rational judgement is involved with our final decision of trust. We can be objective about trusting someone only to the degree that we don’t really care about the situation involved. But to a large extent if we don’t care about something, our trust likely doesn’t really matter anyway.
So unfortunately the things we care the most about are the areas where our trust is the least rational.
What makes this worse is that trust often has a paradoxical relationship with fear. On one hand we could trust someone because they reduce our fear (rightly or wrongly) on the other hand, we weirdly can also trust them because they increase our fear by validating that it is justified.
In both cases the result is an increase in comfort but in the first case that arises out of the fact that we are feeling confident that we understand what is going on, ie the lack of unknowns, the lack of fear. Whereas in the second case the comfort could come about because we have a vague worry and when someone validates that fear, it feels like they are in the trenches with us. We may still be dealing with a scary unknown but at least we are not alone.
This is why politicians and cult leaders often talk about vague fears rather than specific problems: they are tapping into our anxieties. This works because anxiety is almost always due to something unknown, namely the future.
So if someone tries to prove to you that your worry is unfounded, then at an instinctual level you don’t trust that person because they clearly “don’t understand the situation”. If they did, then they would also share your fear. So you start to feel isolated and alone, the most scary thing for a human because our power is in the collective, the tribe.
This makes us vulnerable to someone that validates that fear because once our inner caveman has been triggered to be on the lookout for a potential threat then we instinctively want to have people around us equally on the lookout.
When we finally find a group that validates our anxiety, this feeling of belonging actually gets stronger the more irrational or arbitrary our fear is because when it seems like the “facts” can’t be trusted and everyone is telling you you’re crazy, then the one person who is telling you that you are not seems like a light in the wilderness.
This deep feeling of “finally, someone gets it’ is seductive. We are coming in from the cold to the warmth of the tribe. We go from alone and vulnerable to together and strong. We can finally sleep easy knowing that someone else is “watching for danger”.
To a large extent it is difficult for us to determine which pathway we used to get to the feeling of trust. Did we feel trust because we don’t really care and so soberly analyze the data? Or did we feel trust because we feel affectionate or warm or attracted to the person? Or did they speak to our fears and thus give us validation that we are not crazy?
All of those result in the feeling of comfort that we can trust the person but depending on the actual facts of the matter, we could be trusting the wrong person.
Does this mean that we can’t trust our feeling of trust? Not quite, we still need to operate with an assumption that some people can be trusted because assuming everyone is against you is also too emotional and not rational or reliable. Trust should be assumed to start with but then rigorously policed.
We just have to be constantly taking stock of our emotional state and checking that against reality. Trust but validate. Not validate the external facts, but validate how your emotions are effecting your feeling of trust.
Recognize when you are feeling anxious about an unknown and thus are desperate for the comfort of other people that are seemingly on your side. It is very unlikely that you have truly identified a source of danger that only you and your band of crazies recognize but everyone else is ignorant about.
What about the flip side? How to get through to someone who doesn’t trust you or your ideas because the are huddled in a circle with their fellow cavemen protecting themselves from any “fact” that could disrupt their hard won set of comfort and security.
Again the key is fear.
You don’t reach someone who is scared or anxious by giving them a list of reasons why they shouldn’t feel that way. You reach them by validating their anxiety, but in and of itself, without reference to any supposed facts that seemingly support it.
You recognize that fear as legitimate because all feelings are legitimate. But stop there. It’s not about encouraging the fear, it’s about merely acknowledging it.
It’s that shared sense of danger that binds us to the tribe because even if you are not agreeing with the person that their fear is justified by actual facts, they still feel less on edge when you don’t try to fight their fear.
This is because at an instinctual, caveman level we know that if the danger is unknown then maybe someone else might have a better idea of what it is and how to handle it. So when you are acknowledging their fear but not agreeing with their “facts”, it feels like you are in the trenches with them but looking at a different potential danger.
You build trust before you make your argument, not as a result of your argument. Only then will the person be in a frame of mind that they are able to listen. Just like you.
