Do you think people can be trusted?

On here - yes.

In other places or in other situations a qualified yes. I trust people until proven wrong. Sometimes it causes me problems but usually not. I would rather live my life as trusting and trustworthy than the opposite.

I agree with Paul T as well. I trust individual people more than I trust companies.
 
Interesting thread sir. My way is to trust people until proven otherwise, or given any indication on first meet that I shouldn't.

My observation has been that people who are trustworthy usually do. Those who aren't, usually don't. I think we judge others by what we are. If we tell lies often, we expect others to do the same. If we steal we expect others are theives. Those who are liars and theives h;ave no other frame of reference. Those who are honest do, and think that of others.
 
There's an old Irish saying my maternal grandmother loved:

"FOOL ME ONCE; SHAME ON YOU.

FOOL ME TWICE; SHAME ON ME."
 
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Yes. I start most everyone out at 100%. Have to admidt I do a bit of profiling from time to time, based upon hard earned experience. If I do not fell really good I fall back upon that old auditor saying "Trust but Verify". I still get burned but I've found that if you treat folks with respect it works out well.

B2 (;->
 
I just got burned on a $600 watch by a guy (AKA Rudi Wilburn) in the UK. My understanding is the UK police are on him. It's the 1st. time and I'll be a helluva a lot more cautious the next time.
 
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I got burned here recently. He doesnt need tracking on a sale, items gets lost (supposedly), then I get chargeback. So much for trust.
 
Yes, the internet does not foster trust. In fact, when it comes to buying over the internet, my default position is that I do not trust someone unless (for example) they are someone I 'know' from this forum or elsewhere or unless I can buy with a credit card, in which case it's the card company's problem.

Cheers,

R.
 
I trust people until experience proves me wrong, but I'm less surprised when someone violates that assumed trust.

Because an increasing number of the people we rely on for both mundane and important matters -- mail delivery, mortgages and banking, food sales, whatever -- are essentially anonymous and liable never to be seen again, there's an increased chance that they, and we, will try to gain an unfair advantage. I.e., it's easier for us humans to lie to, or cheat, someone when we think we'll never see them again.
 
Unfortunately, I work in a profession (criminal justice) where lies are commonplace and come with the territory. After a while, you begin to look for certain body language, stories that don't add up, or explanations that are contrary to common "street" sense. Even then, you still get fooled on occassion. I try not to let it affect my overall trust in mankind, but often I find myself skeptical until satisfied that something is "the whole true." Were I not in this line of work I think I would be more generally trustworthy of people.
 
mpjmp said:
Unfortunately, I work in a profession (criminal justice) where lies are commonplace and come with the territory. After a while, you begin to look for certain body language, stories that don't add up, or explanations that are contrary to common "street" sense. Even then, you still get fooled on occassion. I try not to let it affect my overall trust in mankind, but often I find myself skeptical until satisfied that something is "the whole true." Were I not in this line of work I think I would be more generally trustworthy of people.
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I've spent nearly 50 years in security or police work. One certainly does tend to become jaded. It is a thing to be cautious about, but not given up entirely. Too many of the bad guys spend all their waking hours looking for ways to fool and or cheat those they deal with. Just work on keeping your perspective (as you probably already know).
 
I think that trust between people (or organizations of people) falls into two categories (doesn't everything? :)):

1. Direct Trust

This is trust in future performance based on a sufficient history of past performance to use as a predictor. In practice, this need not be as cold as it sounds. You trust your grandmother because she's shown her love for you all your life -- you don't have to consciously reevaluate that calculation every time you see her for that to be true.

2. Brokered Trust

This is when you trust one entity because another entity you already trust vouches for its trustworthiness. Often this form of trust is situational -- you trust someone to perform a particular type of action, but maybe not other types. For example, you trust the mailman to deliver your incoming mail to you and your outgoing mail to the post office, because your government says you can trust him to do so (hmm, maybe you *don't* trust the mailman, then....); but you might not trust the mailman to deliver your child to a neighbor's house further along his route.

I think that included in the category of brokered trust is society- or community-based trust. You trust banks not to steal your money because you trust that government regulatory agencies will prevent them, and that the legal system will punish them if they're not prevented. When the government is proved to be not so trustworthy in its role as overseer of the banks, then trust in banks is diminished.

In a community, you trust the people sitting next to you at your local prayer services not to shout obscenities at you while you relax on your porch. This is because the community would punish them for such acts, by ostracism, etc. The community exerts powerful psychological pressure on its members to adhere to the community's standards of behavior. This does not absolutely prevent all bad acts, but it fosters trust among member of the community.

Similarly, virtual communities have standards of behavior, and a desire by their members to remain members in good standing. This is why we RFF members trust people we don't know personally to honestly complete transactions involving thousands of dollars' worth of camera equipment shipped around the world. In the vast majority of cases this works out fine, as it should. If the parties were not constrained by a shared interest in remaining members in good standing of RFF, I submit that there would be a far higher incidence of cheating.

3. A Priori Trust (wait, I thought there were only 2 categories?!)

Adopting a stance of trust toward fellow humans with whom you have neither a direct nor a brokered relationship, may be a laudable thing from the perspective of personal morality or character development. We would like to believe that everyone can be trusted until they prove otherwise, because this makes daily interactions with strangers far less anxiety-producing.

I submit that this *not*, in fact, trust; it is a form of hope or faith. Trust-until-untrustworty vs. distrust-until-trustworthy is not an example of glass-half-full vs. glass-half-empty. As Simon mentioned above, trust, like respect, must be earned; trust or respect conferred in advance of experience is superficial indeed, and not to be confused with the real thing.

Regards,
Ari
 
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I've spent forty years on the fringes of politics, first covering it for the newspaper, later doing photography for various political campaigns, etc. For over 25 years I did all the photography for the local congressman as well as for the City of North Miami. I've also served on a number of advisory boards. Yes, sometimes I wear a suit. For the most part I'm working with honest people, and the system is pretty good at weeding out the others.
 
Forget the polls. If most everybody didn't trust most everybody else most of the time the thing we call "society" wouldn't exist at all. If the Iron Lady was right about this (no pun intended. . . no, wait, pun intended) we'd all be paralyzed by fear in our isolated homes armed to the teeth and mad as hatters from pulling nightly guard duty. The world of "Mad Max" is a world with no "society" - only armed tribes. Right now, my car is parked in an unguarded garage, my neighbors all keep their rural Vermont homes unlocked and don't lock their cars at night, my children go to schools with no guards, what little cash I have is in a neighborhood bank with no plexiglass between me and the tellers, my library lends me hundreds of books a year on merely my promise to return them when I am done, I can travel to other cities, other countries without making special security precautions . . . wait, banks? libraries? schools? trust in one's neighbors? free travel? that actually starts to sound like something that Dame Margaret may have misplaced.

The reason why con artists can make a living and we consider sociopaths so terrifying is that trust does exist, deeply and at so many levels within our world.

Ben Marks
 
3. A Priori Trust (wait, I thought there were only 2 categories?!)

Adopting a stance of trust toward fellow humans with whom you have neither a direct nor a brokered relationship, may be a laudable thing from the perspective of personal morality or character development. We would like to believe that everyone can be trusted until they prove otherwise, because this makes daily interactions with strange far less anxiety-producing.

I submit that this *not*, in fact, trust; it is a form of hope or faith. Trust-until-untrustworty vs. distrust-until-trustworthy is not an example of glass-half-full vs. glass-half-empty. As Simon mentioned above, trust, like respect, must be earned; trust or respect conferred in advance of experience is superficial indeed, and not to be confused with the real thing.
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Ah, I am glad to hear this. I too was thinking along similar lines. Though I tend "trust" people on first encounter, I do not really call that trust as much as giving them the opportunity to become trustworthy.
 
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