I've written about trust a number of times–most notably in exploring how it helps establish a foundation for experimentation and risk-taking, which in turn support change and growth–but nearly 5 years ago I discussed a formula for trust:
Trust = Motive + Reliability + Competence
In essence this suggests that before we can trust someone we must be assured of their motive, their reliability and their competence. (I first heard this formulation from Clinton Moloney of the Trium Group, but Charles Green substantially expanded my understanding of its origins.)
And while I continue to find this formula useful, in the context of my recent research on the neuroscience of emotions it strikes me as an entirely accurate but somehow insufficient "if-then" statement that implies that trust is the result of logic. But it's clear that we don't arrive at the conclusions that constitute trust through reasoning alone. Our logical assessment of someone's motive, reliability and competence is obviously crucial, but in many (and perhaps most) circumstances we're operating with imperfect data. At a certain point we can reason no further, and the decision to trust someone or not is made on the basis of our emotional response toward that person.
A recent exchange I had with Joel Peterson reinforced the emotional dimension of trust for me. Joel had discussed the importance of trust in a session at an Executive Education program at Stanford, and the group I've been coaching found his remarks highly compelling. I shared their response with him afterwards, and he said:
We tend to be so wrapped up in ourselves, so self-referencing, so insecure that we're driven, above all, to protect a fragile ego. If we can learn to let go, to feel safe, we can learn to trust, to be trustworthy and to move ourselves to better motivations.
The emotional content of Joel's response jumps out at me: Our reluctance to trust is rooted in feelings of insecurity and egotism, and our ability to trust is founded in feelings of safety and acceptance. The specific steps we take to we reach that place where we feel capable of trust is a post for another day, but at the moment I'm finding it helpful simply to highlight this emotional dimension in the hopes that it promotes the idea of "emotional competence" that I've been thinking about recently.
Photo by the U.S. Army. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.
8 Responses
Love trust, Ed. You are right on that the most important thing people look for when deciding how trustworthy we are is our motive, intentions. I’ve always considered trust more of an attitude than an emotion. As an attitude, it has an affective component, but the cognitive and behavioral intention aspects are just as important. Good stuff. Bret
Thanks, Bret. I agree that the objective behavioral data that informs our reasoning is important–and just as I think the equation above is *accurate* but insufficient, I think our cognitive interpretation of any such data is necessary but (also) insufficient when it comes to reaching conclusions about others’ trustworthiness.
Ed, it seems that there need to be two different types of trust to maximize learning/growth/performance etc. One is outward focused – trust in others, and the other -inward focused – trust in self. I can think of some possible connections between the two, and possible ways in which they interact to facilitate learning (and other processes). For instance, higher trust in self can facilitate higher risk taking, vice versa. This is really speaking to me. Inbal.
Thanks, Inbal. I really like your distinction between trust-in-self and trust-in-others, and the ways in which those different feelings interact and support each other. And that gets me thinking about how trust is an emotion even–or especially–when applied to ourselves, and how we feel about ourselves has all sorts of implications for how we feel about and approach others.
Dear Ed Batista,
Thank you for this helpful post, however it is still not clear for me whether trust is an emotion or the result of other emotions? What do you think? Is it a positive emotion on its own just like joy, love, awe, etc.?
Thank you for your answer, Patty
I’m glad you found it helpful, Patty–thanks for letting me know. Despite my (intentionally provocative) title, trust is certainly not a basic emotion according to the classification schemes used by researchers.
In “The Emotional Brain,” Paul LeDoux mentions several such schemes: Sylvan Tompkins’ framework includes 8 basic emotions: surprise, interest, joy, rage, fear, disgust, shame, and anguish. Robert Plutchik’s scheme also includes 8 emotions, but he eliminates “shame” and “interest” and includes “acceptance” and “anticipation.” Paul Ekman, on the other hand, cuts the list down to 6: surprise, happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness.
My title was intended to emphasize the emotional component of trust–I believe that trust is not simply the result of logical reasoning alone (as the formula above might suggest) but of our emotional response and our reasoning working together.
As a real estate agent, getting people to trust me can be a challenge, nice to know that the less insecure I become the more trustworthy I am, kind of a win-win I’d say
Thanks, Lynda. I think there’s a whole series of relationships here–the more we trust ourselves, the more ease and comfort we project, the more others experience us as trustworthy. (I’m not suggesting this is a hard-and-fast rule, but I do think these dynamics are intertwined.)
And to Inbal’s point above, we can work on this from both ends: We can start trusting ourselves more, and we can start trusting others more.