Trust is essential to a functioning society. To get through life, we need to be able to basically trust people we love—our friends and family—as well as our neighbors, colleagues, and even people we don’t know well, like our grocers and mail carriers.
A recent study highlights the importance of trust across our lifespan, showing how very critical it is for our well-being. Researchers analyzed results from nearly 500 studies involving over two and a half million participants of all ages from countries around the world to see how being able to trust affected their life satisfaction and happiness.
Indeed, when considering how much people feel trust within their interpersonal relationships, in the general goodness of people, and in government and institutions, the researchers found that trust and well-being go hand in hand. Being able to trust others increased well-being—and feeling greater well-being allowed someone to trust more.
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The researchers also found that trust and its importance change as we move through the stages of our lives. Trust was slightly more critical for the well-being of children, adolescents, and elderly adults than for younger or middle-aged adults. The associations between trust and well-being were also strongest in countries with higher “generalized trust” in fellow citizens and institutions, showing how our social environment also affects our happiness.
Unfortunately, trust in others and in institutions is foundering in the United States. Fortunately, research provides us with some guidance for how to cultivate trust at different stages of life—and thus, potentially, improve everyone’s well-being.
How trust first develops
From birth, babies are helpless and need caregivers who will love them, provide for them, and protect them from harm. By receiving warm, attentive, and responsive care, babies learn that they can trust those around them and that their world is a safe, benevolent place. Alternatively, if they receive harsh, erratic, or neglectful care, they’ll learn the opposite, setting them up for difficulties later on.
As children grow up, they begin to learn from experience that not everyone is trustworthy. For example, a young child who lends a toy to a friend who refuses to return it will soon learn to distrust that friend. Research suggests children as young as five can spot an adult who is trying to trick them, and won’t trust that person to tell the truth. This means to help kids trust, we must be trustworthy ourselves.
Even without personal experience with untrustworthy people, children receive implicit and explicit messages from parents about whom to trust. For example, parents can pass on their biases against groups of people based on race, gender, or other factors, leading to targeted distrust. Many parents teach their children to avoid strangers, generally, hoping to keep them safe from harm. While this may be a necessary caution, it also makes children today less generally trusting than their parents were at the same age.
Besides learning to trust, children also need to learn to become trustworthy to keep social relationships strong. However, it’s common for children by a certain age to experiment with lying or cheating. While parents may want their children to be honest at all costs, it’s hard to insist on that when children know telling the truth may lead to punishment or harm.
Luckily, parents can encourage more trustworthiness in their kids in other ways, like asking them to commit to honesty, showing appreciation for their honesty, telling stories that inspire honesty, using infractions as learning opportunities (rather than to punish), and role-modeling being trustworthy themselves. This will set them up for a more secure future, where they feel safe being honest.
The importance of building trust in adolescence
As children move into adolescence, being able to trust in others remains crucial for developing the types of peer relationships they need to thrive. Research finds that those who are trustworthy themselves benefit by having better psychological health and social relationships.
The tasks of adolescence are many and sometimes fraught, though. As they develop an authentic sense of self (with their own views and ideas), take on more independent decision making, and create or expand their social network—possibly including romantic or sexual partners—they will need friends and mentors they can trust along the way. Even as teens learn to differentiate themselves from parents and may seem more distant or peer-focused, parents remain important to their development, even when trust is strained by the process.
Since adolescence is a time for exploration, parent/teen relationships benefit when parents communicate with their teens empathically, openly, and with respect. Teens who can be honest with parents will have an easier time navigating the complex changes in their physical, social-emotional, and academic selves. The more parents don’t lose their cool, recognize the need to cede control as their teens mature, and offer supportive coaching, the better.
Teens must also learn how to trust people beyond family and friends—the connections with strangers that will allow them to learn, find work and love, and thrive in life. Teens can gradually experiment with being vulnerable, testing others to see if they can be trusted, and reinforcing or changing their expectations, as needed. Fortunately, the teen brain is well suited to differentiating trustworthy from non-trustworthy behavior, helping adolescents learn strategic trust over time.
How we trust through adulthood
Though the roots of knowing how to trust others may begin in childhood, the ability and need to trust in others, especially interpersonal relationships, increases throughout life. Also, older adults appear to be more trustworthy than younger adults, at least when playing economics games in research labs. Since warm, close relationships are so central to our well-being, and trust helps build strong relationships, it makes sense that being more trusting and trustworthy will increase our positive emotions and life satisfaction.
Being connected to our greater community, a hallmark of well-being, may require being a bit more vulnerable and trusting in the general goodness of others. While biases can inhibit us from trusting in people who look, think, or act differently than us, pursuing more positive contact across groups—like friendships and cooperative work relationships—can help increase our trust for others, making us feel safer and happier.
Studies have found that citizens who have higher trust for their government and their institutions are happier, too. But what makes for a government you can trust? Social justice—having laws that treat people fairly, no matter their income, gender, or ethnicity—is important for trust, and has been found to lead to greater well-being. Also, if people can trust their institutions to provide a safety net for them should something go wrong—like they are injured or can’t work due to sick family members—they are apt to be happier and healthier, too.
Trust in later life
Trust becomes even more important in our elder years. While trusting intimate family and friends is paramount for many elderly people, other trusting relationships seem to matter, too.
Research suggests that older folks often trust their neighbors and even strangers more as they age, as weaker ties can become sources of comfort and aid during phases of physical or cognitive decline (particularly if closer intimates move or pass away). Elderly folks also help build social trust in their communities, through volunteering, becoming mentors, or other forms of civic engagement—a win-win, since these activities tend to improve their health and longevity.
Elders shouldn’t trust others indiscriminately, of course. In places where criminal activity targeting the elderly is high (e.g., door-to-door sales scams), elderly folks may need to be careful whom they trust. Still, they need not lose their overall trust in others. At least some research suggests generalized trust won’t make you more vulnerable to scams, as long as you can still access another’s credibility before trusting them.
Whether or not an elderly person feels a higher degree of trust may also be affected by their country’s social welfare policies. Where social security protection is high and income inequality is lower, there tends to be greater social trust and well-being for all. For elderly people who are economically vulnerable, perhaps relying on fixed incomes, that kind of societal guarantee is bound to make them feel safer and more trusting.
While every person, no matter their age or gender, can benefit from being trusting and trustworthy, it may be impossible in a society that fosters distrust. If you’re living under a dictatorship, or where there is a high degree of political corruption, violent crime, or illegal monitoring of citizens, it may be hard or even dangerous for you to trust others, generally. You may need to rely more on the people who are closer to you, with whom you have a history of shared trust, rather than trust strangers on the street or government institutions.
Still, it’s not in our nature to not trust—and fighting for trustworthiness can make life better for everyone. Even if we’re facing a crisis that tests our trust in government, we can still hold on to a generalized social trust in the goodness of people and learn to thrive. As humans, we must rely on one another to survive; we are social animals, dependent on each other’s goodwill. By keeping trust alive in our families, social circles, neighborhoods, and institutions, we can help build a more trusting and happy society for all.
