Trust is a Tricky Thing

The cliché “Trust but Verify” may be popular but it’s also naïve and illogical. Adopting this naïve belief attracts exploitation by other, less honest characters who will manipulate this nativity to achieve their own ends. More importantly, the economic cost of not establishing trustworthiness before trusting can be catastrophic.

Trust is a tricky thing that creates a constant tension. As social creatures, we have to have some degree of trust in others we interact with to ensure progress. But as individuals seeking self-actualization, we must avoid being deceived from misplaced trust in order to ensure that we achieve our goals.

Thus, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: if we don’t trust anyone, we will never achieve the level of relationship necessary for success; but if we naively trust everyone without confirmation of their trustworthiness, we expose ourselves to manipulation and exploitation as well as fraud by others that can sabotage our success.

The Danger of Putting the Buggy Before the Horse

In a practical sense trust is developed. Trust is a product of an effortful ongoing process of developing confidence in someone or something based on the proven degree of trustworthiness of that person or thing. The proven degree of trustworthiness requires supporting evidence of that trustworthiness.

Thus, here, trust is not an automatic “thing” that is granted prematurely and unconditionally before this process begins but the continual effect of that process as it develops. The condition for trust is trustworthiness. One  cannot exist without the other.

An interpretation of trust as the reliance on someone or something or a confidence placed in someone or something without some degree of established trustworthiness is naïve. To place more value on reliance or confidence itself instead of on evidence of reliability or confidence puts the buggy before the horse.

The former is based on hope (e.g., “I am relying on you to…” or “I have confidence that you will…”)—and hope is for the most part wishful thinking—whereas the latter is based on actual evidence that supports reliability and confidence. In the former case, the confidence isn’t justifiable like it is in the latter case.

At best, it is naïve and illogical to rely on or place confidence in someone or something before that person or thing has shown itself to be trustworthy. At worst, this uncritical approach based on “blind faith” places the person at a severe disadvantage, especially in high risk situations that call for proven reliability and justified confidence.

Naïve Trust Prevents Good Judgement in Decision-Making

Trusting someone or something without verifying that person or thing’s trustworthiness omits the most crucial part of the decision-making process—i.e., good judgment. When a decision is made without good judgment, there will inevitably be negative consequences.

Being naïve and trusting someone or something without evidence of trustworthiness is poor judgment and could harm the decision-making process as well as the stakeholders of the decision itself.

Thus, it’s crucial to hold the person or thing necessitating trust accountable as opposed to trusting that person or thing on blind faith without evidence of trustworthiness. This can be challenging given the fact that we live in a busy world that moves fast and may not allow for a thorough verification of trustworthiness in every situation. But it is nevertheless economically beneficial to make a effort to establish some degree of trustworthiness.

Verifying Trustworthiness in a Busy World

It is both possible and necessary to establish trust in a world that moves fast.

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In general, establishing trust is more economical than not having trust. Moreover, the benefit of establishing trust outweighs any inconvenience of this process. The cost of not having trust in a person or thing, or the cost of broken trust that could have been prevented with foresight, will almost always be greater than the cost of verifying that trust.

Verifying trustworthiness involves two primary considerations: (1) trustworthiness should be proportional to the purpose of trust; and (2) trust occurs in degrees and is largely situation-specific.

Thus, if the degree of trust required is higher, then the cost of verifying trustworthiness will be higher because the verification process will be more comprehensive. For example, when hiring for a position with exposure to highly confidential or proprietary information, a background “self-report” questionnaire alone would be insufficient; the respondent’s answers would need to be checked against objective evidence to verify the truthfulness of those answers.

But if trustworthiness is less of a concern, then the verification process will be less comprehensive, and thus, less costly. For example, a statement provided by an immaterial person of interest in a criminal defense case will be less important than the credibility of a key witness to the alleged crime who will likely be called to testify. In this
case, it would be uneconomical to verify the person of interest’s statement as trustworthiness related to this person is immaterial to the case. On the other hand, it would be critical to the case to verify the key witness’s statement.

Finding Compromise Without Sacrificing Trustworthiness

To summarize, one shouldn’t be naïve and trust without first verifying trustworthiness.

Thoughtlessly adopting groupthink or repeating popular clichés can have negative consequences, especially when it involves the trustworthiness of people or things. The cliché “Trust but Verify” has popular appeal but it is also naïve and lacks logical validity.

Ultimately, one must understand that it’s not possible to absolutely verify trustworthiness. It’s a complex process based on distinguishing truths from half-truths from untruths from lies. Truth cannot be determined in pure form because there are too many confounding variables that inevitably distort it. Facts are open to interpretation.

Consequently, there will always be a degree of suspicion or doubt involved in any situation that calls for trusting someone or something. Nevertheless, it is possible to achieve a workable degree of confidence in something or someone based on the degree of trustworthiness required for that specific situation.

To avoid being manipulated, exploited, or defrauded by others from naïve trust whilst also avoiding potential ruptures in relationships from mistrust, it’s important to strike a balance by trusting to the extent of trustworthiness but no more.

This realistic trust approach enables one to achieve their goals without placing themselves at a disadvantage.