Trust Everybody, But Shuffle The Cards Yourself

In a recent Moral Universe article, we asked “who do you trust when you can’t trust yourself” as we explored the concept of identity.  This was not an idle comment; trust is a critical part of our lives and is perhaps humanity's most powerful social technology. It allows strangers to cooperate, enables markets to function, and forms the foundation of our most meaningful relationships and exchanges. Yet despite its fundamental importance, we rarely examine the mechanics of trust or appreciate how it permeates every aspect of our personal and professional lives. This article asks: who and what can we trust in these turbulent times?

The Nature of Trust

At its core, trust is our confidence that we can depend on the identity, actions or statements of another party. It's a psychological state where we willingly accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of another's intentions or behaviour. Trust isn't binary but exists on a spectrum, building gradually through consistent reliability, integrity, and demonstrations of good intentions. 

Trust has several key components: reliability (believing someone will act as promised), competence (believing they can deliver on promises), honesty (believing they will tell the truth), and benevolence (believing they have our interests at heart). Different relationships emphasize different aspects of this trust equation. Experience counts here, whether it is personal, institutional or even ebay feedback. Increasingly, in digital spaces, we also lean on digital cues: verification badges, mutual connections, and user reviews as proxies for trust.

The Moral Dimensions of Trust

Trust is inherently intertwined with moral considerations. When we trust someone, we create an implicit moral contract:

· Moral expectations: Trust contains expectations of ethical behaviour. We trust others not just to be reliable, but to act with integrity and honesty.

· Created obligations: The act of trusting someone creates moral obligations that wouldn't otherwise exist. Once someone knows you're depending on them, they have a responsibility that carries moral weight. Trusting someone creates moral obligations that didn’t exist before, a quiet contract written in expectation rather than ink.

· Power asymmetry: Trust relationships create power imbalances. The trusted party gains influence over the truster's outcomes, introducing questions about the ethical use of that power.

These moral dimensions help explain why breaches of trust feel like personal violations rather than mere practical disappointments. Trust betrayal wounds us not just pragmatically but morally, we feel wronged, not just inconvenienced. However, trust also operates in non-moral realms. We make trust calculations based on competence assessments, institutional safeguards, and practical track records. Different cultures and contexts also interpret the moral obligations of trust differently, making it both a universal human experience and a culturally specific one.  There are vast differences between trust norms in Eastern and Western societies and this has proved fertile ground for books, films and consultants.  

The Paranoid Perspective: "Trust No One"

"The truth is out there," claimed FBI Agent Mulder in the cult television series The X-Files, but so the show’s mantra: "Trust no one." This perspective represents the counterpoint to our general social inclination toward trust: a paranoid vigilance that sees danger in vulnerability and conspiracy in cooperation.  It also embodies the fear of the deep state and corrupt corporations.

This worldview isn't entirely without merit. History provides countless examples of betrayed trust at both personal and institutional levels. Intelligence agencies operate on principles of compartmentalized information and need-to-know access precisely because complete trust would create unacceptable vulnerabilities.

The "trust no one" philosophy offers several insights:

· Information asymmetry: We never have complete information about others' motives or actions, making all trust inherently risky.

· Institutional scepticism: Large organizations often have competing interests that may conflict with individual welfare, making institutional trust particularly problematic.

· Power corrupts: Those with power may exploit trust relationships for personal gain, making vigilance necessary, especially in asymmetric power relationships.

Yet a society operating purely on mistrust would collapse under the weight of verification costs and missed cooperation opportunities. Even Mulder, despite this mantra, formed trust relationships, with Scully for example, that enabled his quest for truth (and from recall was even the father of Scully’s child!). Complete mistrust is as untenable as complete trust is naive.

The healthy middle ground involves what sociologists call "critical trust"—trust tempered by reasonable verification, appropriate scepticism, and contextual awareness. We might trust a doctor with our medical care while still seeking a second opinion on major procedures. We might trust a financial advisor while still reviewing our portfolio performance carefully.

The challenge lies in finding this balance: enough trust to enable meaningful cooperation without the blind faith that enables exploitation. As the famously quoted Russian proverb states: "Trust, but verify."

The Team Building Trust Fall: A Physical Metaphor

Team building exercises can inspire terror in many of us. We can be asked to share personal stories, sing a song, give a speech or maybe bring along some childhood photos where our identity has to be guessed. Outward bounds or assault courses allow us to bond with our fellow workers (even Colin from Accounts).  Few exercises demonstrate trust more viscerally than the classic "trust fall" that many of us will have experienced.  A person stands with their back to colleagues, crosses their arms over their chest, and falls backward, completely dependent on their team to catch them. This simple activity powerfully illustrates the essence of trust (apologies for any flashbacks or PTSD folks).

The person falling experiences genuine vulnerability and risk. Despite rational assurances, the body instinctively resists falling backward. This mirrors how trust often requires overcoming our protective instincts to allow true connection.   Cue your colleagues laughing a little too hard at your discomfort, not exactly helpful. The catchers must demonstrate both reliability and competence. Good intentions alone aren't enough, they must coordinate effectively to support their colleague. This reflects how trust in real-world scenarios requires both goodwill and capability.

The emotional response when successfully caught, relief, gratitude, nervous laughter and increased connection, mirrors how trust experiences strengthen relationships. Each successful "fall" makes the next one easier, just as trust tends to compound over time.  Just hope the person you drop isn’t your boss, or your annual bonus might do a trust fall of its own. 

Trust in Personal Relationships

In our close relationships, trust creates the safety necessary for emotional intimacy. We trust friends and family with our vulnerabilities, secrets, and authentic selves. This type of trust develops through motional availability during difficult times, consistent reliability in keeping promises, transparent communication and honesty even on difficult topics, respecting confidences and demonstrating care through actions, not just words.

When personal trust is broken through betrayal, deception, or repeated unreliability, the damage often exceeds the specific incident. The relationship's very foundation is questioned, creating uncertainty about all past and future interactions. Rebuilding such trust can take a long time and may be impossible.  But the best friendships or loving relationships are built on trust.

Trust in Political Systems

Democratic politics operates on a paradox of trust: voters repeatedly trust politicians despite evidence this trust is often misplaced. Campaign promises go unfulfilled and manifestos unimplemented, yet voters continue extending trust to political figures and institutions, hoping that the next lot will be different and deliver for them. This seemingly irrational trust persists because democracy requires delegation, voters trust institutional safeguards more than individuals, cognitive biases lead us to remember fulfilled promises while forgetting broken ones, and hope for positive change remains a powerful motivating force: “Yes we can!” 

This tension between necessary political trust and its frequent betrayal remains central to democratic systems. They are only in for four years and there’s always next time, right?

Trust in Business Relationships

Trust in business is critical; whether this be goods and services trade between two parties who may not know each other well, payments to a new supplier, the delivery of a project and even the employment of a staff member. Professional contexts formalise trust through contracts, credentials, and reputation systems, but these mechanisms supplement rather than replace fundamental trust. Business relationships still depend on the trust elements detailed above but also include professional integrity and ethical behaviour, delivering on promises and meeting deadlines, transparency about capabilities and limitations, fair negotiation and pricing practices and consistency in quality and communication.  When this fails systemically, e.g. through monopolistic practices, governments often need to step in to force the trust elements through regulation.

Organisations with high internal trust typically outperform competitors due to reduced monitoring costs, increased information sharing, and greater collaboration. Trust becomes a competitive advantage that's difficult to replicate. Increasingly, digital credentials, verified marketplaces and platform reputation scores are modern extensions of this old principle.

Trust in Economic Systems

Perhaps nowhere is trust more essential yet invisible than in our economic systems.

Trust in Trade

Commerce relies on a complex web of trust relationships: buyers trust sellers to accurately represent products, sellers trust buyers to fulfill payment obligations and both parties trust in shared standards of fairness and the enforcement of agreements

Without this fundamental trust, each transaction would require exhaustive verification, making trade prohibitively inefficient. The evolution of trade from direct barter to complex global supply chains represents an extraordinary expansion of trust networks.  This does not always work and banks have stepped in with guarantees, insurance and letters of credit to add security where trust may be lacking with new trading partners.

And let’s not get started on tariffs and trading trust between nation states!

Trust in Banking and Payments

Banking and financial systems function as institutional trust intermediaries more generally: depositors trust banks to safeguard funds and provide access when needed, banks trust borrowers to repay loans according to terms (and take security where they can’t entirely trust repayment), financial institutions trust each other to honour obligations and maintain solvency and all participants trust in regulatory or membership systems (think Swift or Visa and MasterCard) to ensure fair play.

Payment methods represent different trust architectures: cash requires trust in currency authenticity and stable value, credit cards require trust between consumers, merchants, card networks, and issuing banks, digital payments require trust in technology systems and data security.  Cryptocurrencies, not backed by a central bank’s promise to pay, replace institutional trust with cryptographic verification and the promise of instant settlement and programmable contracts alongside of course the possibility of absolute anonymity and lack of identity oversight. The evolution of these payment systems in the digital age reflects our ongoing effort to reduce friction but must maintain or enhance trust.

Financial crises, from bank runs to economic meltdowns, are fundamentally crises of trust. When confidence in institutions falters, the entire system becomes unstable. In the 2008 financial crisis once concerns were raised about Northern Rock for example, people began to withdraw their funds and very soon there were queues outside branches as savers rushed to remove their money. Before long the government had to step in.

Ultimately, money itself really only works because we all agree that it works and have confidence in it: money is, quite literally, a confidence trick.

The New Trust Frontier: Digital Identities and Algorithms

Modern technology creates new trust challenges and opportunities in the age of AI, creating fake news, fake video, fake voices and bots acting like people on social media to spread disinformation. Digital interactions remove many traditional trust cues like body language, scale and anonymity make reputation systems increasingly important, data vulnerabilities create new risks for trusted relationships whilst automation and AI require trust in systems rather than individuals.

We are in the age of catfishing, selfie lifestyles, airbrushed images and X posts made by PR agencies. At the same time, our addiction to social media can isolate us in echo chambers or seemingly give licence to anonymous keyboard warriors to spread hate and intolerance. Doom scrolling has become an obsession and the algorithms have us trapped in an endless digital loop. It can feel like reality and truth have got lost on the digital highway.

However, it is not all bad news, as technology is also helping build trust between strangers through shared platforms and digital signatures and verification. Blockchain is a great example of this.   Digital identity wallets, biometric logins, and platform-based reputation systems are now the foundation of digital trust.

The moral questions around trust become even more complex in digital environments. Is an algorithm that correctly predicts your preferences, feeds you the same fodder endlessly and shares your data without full disclosure at all acceptable, legal or trustworthy? Can we develop moral frameworks for trust that apply to both human and automated systems?  We have moved on from the famous New Yorker cartoon: “On the internet nobody knows you are a dog.” And that’s the least of our problems.

Conclusion

Trust remains our most essential social resource, enabling cooperation at scales that would otherwise be impossible. Whether in personal relationships or global financial systems, the fundamental dynamics of trust remain remarkably consistent: we assess reliability, competence, honesty, and benevolence before making ourselves vulnerable.

Understanding trust more deeply allows us to build stronger relationships, more effective organizations, and more resilient economic systems. In a world of increasing complexity and interdependence, our ability to create and maintain trust will determine not just our personal happiness but our collective prosperity.

The moral foundations of trust remind us that trust is not merely a practical arrangement but a fundamental ethical orientation toward others. When we choose to trust, and to be trustworthy, we participate in a moral ecology that makes human cooperation possible. Trust may begin as a practical calculation, but at its best, it evolves into a moral commitment to mutual care and responsibility.

Perhaps most remarkably, as demonstrated in our persistent trust in political systems despite repeated disappointments, trust contains an element of hope that transcends pure rationality. This hopeful aspect of trust, our willingness to believe in possibilities beyond current evidence, drives human progress even as it occasionally lets us down.

The tension between necessary trust and appropriate scepticism remains one of humanity's great balancing acts. Neither blind faith nor paranoid suspicion serves us well. In an age of information overload, algorithmic influence, and blurred lines between reality and simulation, trust isn’t just a social tool, it’s a survival skill. Wisdom lies not in "trust everyone" or "trust no one," but in developing the discernment to know when, whom, and how much to trust, and in creating systems where trustworthiness is both expected and rewarded.

The truth is out there.  Trust me on this.