Like Faith, trust can be seen as a belief, or as an action. The essential nature of action is especially obvious with trust: if we say that we trust but do not act accordingly, then trust probably is not present.
- Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships. [Stephen Covey]
- . . . to be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. [George MacDonald]
- Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. [attributed to Golda Meir]
Trust, confidence, reliance and fidelity are elements of Faith. Strangely, though, Faith is at its most creative when all its elements are absent. When one feels that all hope is lost – does not trust or have confidence in anyone, and does not believe that she can rely on anyone, or that fidelity will ever be rewarded – that is when Faith can produce its greatest miracles. Of course, this is mainly and perhaps exclusively a product of our perceptions. The result was possible all along but we did not see it. Faith does not change the objective reality; it changes us, and when we change, we gain power to affect our environment.
That can begin with trust. Though Faith will stir us most when we thought all was lost, trust is also an important spiritual muscle that needs exercise. It bears a direct relation to Faith: “. . . trusting is a process that involves three social practices: (1) signaling ability and integrity; (2) demonstrating benevolence; and (3) establishing an emotional connection. Our study contributes to the trust literature on consulting and to trust research more generally by advancing a process approach and emphasizing the social, not merely mental, nature of trusting as involving a leap of faith.” “What distinguishes faith relationships from trust relationships is that both parties value the faith relationship intrinsically.” “. . . although faith, like trust, enables us to rely on others for things that matter to us, faith, unlike trust, enables us to continue relying on them in the face of challenges to doing so, so that we might enjoy both the goods those relationships can afford in the long run and the stability we need for the security and support conducive to fulfilling our long-term aspirations and projects.”
There are two sides to trust: earning it and giving it.
Earning trust – being trustworthy: “Someone who is trustworthy is competent and dependable. Trustworthy people tell the truth, keep their promises, fulfil their contracts.” “Trustworthiness is the most significant predictor of trust and has a significant impact on people’s levels of trust.” “People who are high in guilt-proneness are more likely to be trustworthy than are individuals who are low in guilt-proneness, but they are not universally more generous.”
Trusting in the material/conceptual world: “Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises.” “. . . trust is pivotal in doing science, since researchers in their everyday practice rely on the knowledge produced by other experts with different specialization and expertise. In the same way, trust is fundamental for the public understanding of science.” Oreskes argues that “the trustworthiness of scientific claims derives from the social process by which they are rigorously vetted. This process is not perfect—nothing ever is when humans are involved—but she draws vital lessons from cases where scientists got it wrong. Oreskes shows how consensus is a crucial indicator of when a scientific matter has been settled, and when the knowledge produced is likely to be trustworthy.”
Trusting other people: As with exhibiting Faith in action, exhibiting trust yields positive outcomes. “Trust is one of the most powerful motivations and inspirations. People want to be trusted. . . They thrive on trust.” “Employees who feel trusted by their managers are more productive than those who do not.” However, it may come at a price: “To trust someone is to allow oneself to become vulnerable to potential exploitation by that person . . .”
Trust is a core concept in parent-child relationships: “Trust has been a central construct in psychological theorizing about healthy psychosocial development, particularly from ethological psychodynamic perspectives. For instance, in Erikson’s (1950) developmental theory, developing an appropriate balance of trust versus mistrust in early childhood is one of the normative crises that must be resolved during the lifespan and is central to how later developmental crises, especially the development of identity in adolescence, is resolved.”
It is essential to a successful romantic partnership. “Romantic relationships are riddled with reason to self-protect against the possibility of rejection.” “Trust is essential for establishing stable and fulfilling romantic relationships between partners.”
It is highly important in business relationships. “Trust is essential for healthy, reciprocal relationships; creating safe environments; engaging in transparent interactions; successfully negotiating power differentials; supporting equity and putting trauma informed approaches into practice.” “. . . if trust is present in a business relationship, it improves performance, lowers transaction costs, and acts as a buffer against negative outcomes.” “. . . trusting relationships cultivate increases in motivation, capability, and opportunity for supporting implementation among implementation stakeholders, with implications for commitment and resilience for sustained implementation, and ultimately, positive implementation outcomes.”
As with Faith generally, there is a relationship between trust and the willingness to take risks. “Interpersonal trust (IT) is the willingness to entrust personal resources to others and take corresponding risks in uncertain situations . . .”
Real
True Narratives
Book narratives:
- Steven M.R. Covey, The Speed of Trust: The One Things That Changes Everything (Free Press, 2006).
- Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, ed., A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC (Rutgers University Press, 1998).'
- Terry Weible Murphy, Michael Jenike and Edward E. Zine, Life in Rewind: The Story of a Young Courageous Man Who Persevered Over OCD and the Harvard Doctor Who Broke All the Rules to Help Him (William Morrow, 2009).
- S.J. Watson, Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel (Harper, 2011): can she trust her husband, or herself?
Technical and Analytical Readings
- Eric M. Uslaner, The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust (Oxford University Press, 2018).
- David Collins, Iris Vidmar Jovanovic & Mark Alfano, eds., The Moral Psychology of Trust (Lexington Books, 2023).
- Eric M. Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- Reinhard Bachmann and Akbar Zaheer, eds., Handbook of Trust Research (Edward Elgar Publishing , 2006).
- Roderick M. Kramer, Organizational Trust: A Reader (Oxford University Press, 2007).
- Mark N.K. Saunders, Denise Skinner, Graham Dietz, Nicole Gillespie and Roy J. Lewicki, Organizational Trust: A Cultural Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
- Trudy Govier, Social Trust and Human Communities (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997).
- Trudy Govier, Dilemmas of Trust (Carleton University Press, 1999).
- Mark E. Warren, Democracy and Trust (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- Adam B. Seligman, The Problem of Trust (Princeton University Press, 1997).
- Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (Free Press, 1995).
- Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Riverhead Books, 2017): “Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict or cure a disease. No individual knows everything it takes to build a cathedral, an atom bomb or an aircraft. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality, but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups.”
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Walter Dean Myers, Sunrise Over Fallujah: A Novel (Scholastic Press, 2008).
- F.E. Higgins, The Black Book of Secrets: A Novel (Fiewel and Friends, 2007).
- Olen Steinhauer, The Tourist: A Novel (Minotaur, 2009).
- Susan Choi, Trust Exercise: A Novel (Henry Holt & Company, 2019): “It’s about sophomore theater students, their souls in flux. It’s about misplaced trust in adults, and about female friendships gone dangerously awry. In the end, it’s about cruelty. Satisfyingly, it’s also about revenge.”
- N.K. Jemsin, The City We Became: A Novel (Orbit, 2020): “. . . its main project is one of bridge-building, knitting communities together, showing how the embodied boroughs must overcome their own prejudices, their own irritations and limitations, to embrace and trust one another before they can win the fight.”
- Hernan Diaz, Trust: A Novel (Riverhead, 2022): “Trust: both a moral quality and a financial arrangement, as though virtue and money were synonymous. The term also has a literary bearing: Can we trust this tale? Is this narrator reliable? Diaz breaks the book into four sections, and the title of the first one is similarly ambiguous, echoing that of the whole work.”
From the dark side:
- Jennifer Weiner, The Summer Place: A Novel (Atria Books, 2022), “meditates on mothers and daughters. Sarah harbors a petulant grudge against Ronnie for the sin of working too much; Ronnie can’t understand Sarah’s modern-day overscheduling of her boys, why she can’t let them run wild and free on the Cape. Their secrets and similarities seep out.”
- Leila Motley, Nightcrawling: A Novel (Knopf, 2022): “In This Sex-Trafficking Ring, the Johns Are the Oakland Police. Leila Mottley’s debut novel about a teenager’s serial abuse is based on a true story.”
Poetry
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, / And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, / Stealing my breath of life, I will confess / I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. / Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, / Giving me strength erect against her hate, / Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, / I stand within her walls with not a shred / Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. / Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, / And see her might and granite wonders there, / Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, / Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
[Claude McKay, “America”]
Other poems:
- John Keats, “O Blush Not So!”
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Richard Wagner's tragic opera Lohengrin, WWV 75 (1850) (approx. 215-230’), tells the story of a woman who inadvertently stymies the search for the Holy Grail, which we can see as a metaphor for happiness or justice. “There are two sources of suspense in Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin that propel the action forward, both having their roots in uncertainty. The uncertainty in act 1 pertains to Elsa - whether or not she is guilty or innocent; the uncertainty in acts 2 and 3 to Lohengrin - who he is, from where he comes.” “Conviction and doubt lie at the heart of Wagner’s Lohengrin (‘Lohengrin suchte das Weib, das an ihn glaubte’ [Lohengrin sought the woman who believed in him]) and naturally call for an epistemological analysis of its characters’ beliefs. What is certain and what remains conjectural? How much does each character know about the others? What do they know about what the others know about themselves? And in what way does each arrive at conclusions and translate them into actions?” “Elsa, by her desire, aroused the arrival of Lohengrin. The manipulative and malevolent Ortrud, as well as Telramund, are only the personification of the doubt and suspicions that prompt the young woman to question the Chevalier about his true origins.” This kind of uncertainty about people is what people routinely call a lack of trust. Elsa’s insistence on knowing her benefactor’s name is her undoing. Like Faith, trust must be lived, not merely spoken. Lohengrin may be Wagner’s most obscure opera but as you watch, focus on the issue of trust. Top recorded performances are by Windgassen & Steber (Keilberth) in 1953, Windgassen & Nilsson (Jochum) in 1954, Kónya & Rysanek (Cluytens) in 1958, Kónya & Grümmer (Matačić) in 1959, Thomas & Silja (Sawallisch) in 1962, Thomas & Grümmer (Kempe) in 1963 ***, Domingo & Studer (Abbado) in 1990 (video), Botha & Pieczonka (Bychkov) in 2009, Vogt & Dasch (Nelsons) in 2011, and Vogt & Nylund (Elder) in 2017.
In a sonata for any two instruments, the two players rely on each other to be sure but we hear this more clearly in the cello sonata format than in most two-voice sonatas. The reason for this is the cello’s baritone voice, which lends an air of seriousness to any composition where it plays a leading role. In its nascent form, the cello sonata sounds like an underpinning of Faith: trust.
- Boccherini, compete cello sonatas (1770s) (approx. 263’)
- Antonio Vivaldi, cello sonatas, Op. 14 (1740) (approx. 72’)
- Johann Sebastian Bach, Cello Sonatas (ca. 1740): No. 1 in G major, BWV 1027 (approx. 15’); No 2 in D major, BWV 1028 (approx. 14-16’); No. 3 in G minor, BWV 1029 (approx. 14-18’)
Other works evoking trust:
- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Nonet (1893) (26’): all the players work together, harmoniously, in common purpose.
- Derek B. Scott, Symphony No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 26 (1997) (approx. 24’), tells a musical story of a progressive building of trust through its four movements: (1) a tone of suspicion dominates the first movement; (2) this gives way to a cautious coming together, which works its way into understanding; (3) in the scherzo, the voices go their separate ways, with separate interests and agendas; (4) the frantic spate of activity has calmed, and the characters have learned to work together in mutual respect and understanding. “The music is songful and alive, shorn of all academic pretensions but buttressed by sure musical means.”
From the shadows: In these two works by Hendrik Andriessen, the soloist struggles with trust, as the other players wander off repeatedly.
- Concertino for Cello & Orchestra (1970) (approx. 10-12’)
- Violin Concerto (1969) (approx. 22’)
From the dark side: Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes, Op. 33 (1945) (approx. 140-155’) (libretto), is a story of distrust; “. . . a dark story of isolation and alienation- the solitary social outcast set against the collective insanity and 'mob rule' of the crowd. For the composer, a homosexual, staunch pacifist, and conscientious objector during the Second World War, it was 'a subject very close to my heart — the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.'”. Performances are by Pears & Watson (Britten) in 1958; a 1969 video production; Vickers & Harper (Colin Davis) in 1977; and Storey & Shipley (Valčuha).
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Keyshia Cole, “Trust” (lyrics)
- P!nk, “Who Knew” (lyrics)
- Mary Chapin Carpenter & Joe Diffie, “Not Too Much to Ask” (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- John Everett Millais, Trust Me (1862)
Film and Stage
- A Passage to India, adapted from the E.M. Forster novel, the film is “a story of what can happen as a result of a succession of wrong-headed decisions and dreadful misunderstandings, of trust either given too easily or withheld far too long”
- La Femme Nikita, presenting the “paradoxical concept of a young woman blossoming socially while carrying out cold-blooded murders,” this film tests our ability to find dignity amid evil