Attitudes in Trust

Our attitudes of Trust result from an intricate mix of instinct, perception and learned behavior, paradigms of which start developing just after birth. A child’s model for intimate relationships and trust begins with the love and affection demonstrated to it by the parents and others. The importance of instinctive responses of a mother cooing to the infant, or the parental response to the child’s failure, in building trust cannot be understated. These are the building blocks of creating a trusting attitude (or a lack of it) in the child and become the base for all future social interactions as the child grows. The act of ‘play’, one of the most important instructive tools for children, is also an important social school for the child, helping seed Trust in the child beyond the ‘known-and-comfortable’ family circle.

Trust is like a river, and its continuous flow is necessary for the trust bond to remain intact without drying up. Like water, Trust moves through paths of least resistance in the relationship and minute drops of Trust coalesce over time adding to the cascade. Once the critical-mass of flow is achieved, Trust becomes a living force, capable of auto-generating ‘life’ in the relationship. Since a constant flow is needed for trust to exist, Trust requires continuous replenishment, without which it will gradually dry up. Building trust is less an act of creating, and more an act of ‘accumulation’ as it crosses the barriers (of mistrust and doubt) transforming it to a strong and table bond.

So why does a trustor take such an enormous risk of making himself  'vulnerable' with no immediate and tangible payback?

Though it defies logic, there seems to be a natural tendency in the trustor to accept this vulnerability ignoring innate drives of self-preservation. In fact, if Trust were not among the most important aspects necessary for life and community behavior, it might not have become so indispensable and prevalent. 

Like everything else, the act of Trusting has its benefits and disadvantages. Though Trust makes one vulnerable, it visibly increases the trustor’s chances of survival and propagation of the individual as well as the community at large. 

(extract from the forthcoming book 'Decoding Communications')