I have been reading and researching interpersonal trust recently because in my years of looking at the General Social Survey of the US I noticed it relates to many important aspects of life such as economic welfare and happiness.
Trust is a major determinant of human cooperation and welfare, and economic growth is an especially important case. Why should that be?
A lot has to do with lowering transaction costs. High transaction costs are like sand in the gears. When you have to put time and resources into checking and double-checking everything before, during and after any exchange many things that seem worth it become too costly. Eliminating that need throughout the economy makes those activities cost-effective and creates a great deal more beneficial economic activity.
In addition, economic activities no longer confine themselves to isolated points in space and time; they can spread into all areas of life throughout the world to create a true market economy. At the extremes the difference is enormous. Low trust traps people into isolated communities confined to hunting, gathering and small-scale farming and conflict with their neighbours. High trust gives you modern civilization.
Belonging to a high-trust community requires thinking and behaving in ways that run counter to the way most people think and behave. In concrete terms, it means having empathy, being willing to follow rules and being able to feel guilt.
Most people only have empathy toward, and trust, close kin, long-time friends and perhaps people who are most obviously a lot like themselves. They tend to produce particular moral communities with an interest in their own continuation. They are reluctant to make sacrifices for people for whom they do not feel natural empathy or trust. They are reluctant to skimp on support for their own families in order to provide for those they suspect could be hostile to themselves.
Greater family
A willingness to give to charity, pay tax for welfare or redistribution depends on people thinking they are sharing with their own, their greater family. They have the reflex of trying to keep the wider community clean, peaceful and orderly.
A high degree of personal resemblance is especially important. Diverse societies are associated with lower trust. Of the several ways of measuring diversity (ethnicity, language and religion) it is ethnic differences that are associated with low trust. Yet some societies and cultures have managed to extend their sphere of trust wider than others.
In Europe, since late antiquity, the Catholic church demanded you only married someone less related to you than a cousin. In Western Europe that resulted in a widening of the circle of trust and a greater willingness and ability to put trust in strangers, that is, in greater individualism, weak kinship ties and impersonal prosociality. Eastern Europeans are less accepting of strangers and cultural and sexual minorities today.
This eventually led to city states, competitive monasteries and the formation of other independent institutions like universities. In the longer term it led to industrial capitalism and the rise of open markets, including in labour. Industrialists found that they could more easily expand and contract their workforce by hiring and firing non-family members.
Individualism is not the only path to community trust. High levels of interpersonal trust correlate with trust in institutions like government, the military, courts, police, religions, and so on. Trust reduces transaction costs across society and supports the rule of law. We see less crime, less regulation and red tape, fewer trade barriers or controls on the movement of capital and people, more respect for property rights, more modest taxes on trade and sounder money.
Trust is also associated with bigger institutions – for example, larger government (in spite of less regulation), and greater redistribution and welfare.
Suppress misgivings
Trusted institutions enable us to outsource the downside of double checking everything. Since people need moral approval from authority figures they tend to follow those they consider trustworthy and suppress misgivings – at least for a while. Institutions like government became an important locus of trust and have in turn led to greater individualism and impersonal prosociality in places like Japan.
A history of honourable dealings with people who do not resemble us enable us to relax and trust them too. When that happens trusted governments usually turn out to have been instrumental. Indeed, the Catholic church’s role in extending the circle of trust in Western Europe is a prime example.
Institutions can destroy trust too. Totalitarian governments – including those claiming to be prosocial like communism – are foremost among these.
Communist governments do not trust the people to do what Marxist theory suggests they should and so keep a close watch on them and use force liberally (excuse the pun). The people quickly learn not to trust the government and start suspecting their neighbours, friends and family of being government agents.
There is a Soviet joke that says, “In the West man is dominated by man. In the East it is the other way round.” Post-communist countries in Europe are still less trusting than those who never experienced it.
Institutions often create a consensus. That can be a good or bad thing. On the bad side a complete lack of diversity and a high trust placed in authorities and institutions can however end up reducing intellectual dissent and innovation in some circumstances (communism being a prominent example), but that is not the rule. On the good side widespread agreement on norms creates trust.
Low-trust society
South Africa is a fairly low-trust society. It is ethnically diverse so starts with a handicap, but we should not lose hope because of that. Events that create a national identity, like international sports competitions, help. Sound reliable institutions would help even more, but those are more like chicken and egg situations in that they also depend on trust across groups.
The most important institutions for us to tackle are the police (no one trusts them) and government policies that frankly pit groups against each other. Trust requires groups to reconcile and work voluntarily with each other and pitting them against each other does the opposite. I personally believe the welfare of every South African group depends crucially on us fixing this last point.
[Image: Chang Duong on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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