Trust & Belief Formation Trust plays a critical role in forming our beliefs

What we consider to be our personal knowledge is mostly a delusion. Most of the knowledge we think we own resides in other people’s minds.

As I explained in the Knowledge Delusion, we each know very little. What we consider to be our personal knowledge is mostly a delusion. Most of the knowledge we think we know resides in other people’s minds. Knowledge is communal.

When we say we believe the earth goes around the sun or believe in anthropocentric global warming, what we are, in fact, saying is that we trust the authority or authorities who have told us this.

Most of our beliefs are based on trust and are not formed empirically through direct experience but by the unquestioning acceptance of information from a trusted or authoritative source.

We trust experts and people in positions of authority, such as doctors, scientists, and teachers, but we rarely do due diligence on whom we depend.

Most of us are not sufficiently familiar with science or the scientific method; thus, our scientific beliefs are not based on a rational evaluation of evidence. Furthermore, we do not have the capacity or desire to understand or evaluate scientific information.

Furthermore, somewhat paradoxically, research shows that science literacy alone does not persuade people to correct their false beliefs (in fact, it can help people entrench them) and that science curiosity is of more importance.

Few of us can tell a good scientist or scientific paper from a bad one, and so some of us are likely to trust anti-vaxers, flat-earthers, or conspiracy theorists.

Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence that in the past, experts got things wrong, sometimes terribly, which makes it easier to justify outlandish beliefs.

Even scientists trust other scientists. They accept and build on other scientists’ work without any checks, as to do so would take too much time and would be practically impossible.

Perhaps the clinching point is that trust is an essential ingredient of belief formation.

Why?

Because we don’t have the time to check the evidence for everything, so we have to take some things at face value.

We trust doctors, chemists, and teachers.

Even experts trust other experts, taking their data and outputs as inputs for their own deliberations because checking from first principles is virtually impossible.

The world of information, somewhat like commerce, is presupposed by trust.

Credit: Matthew Syed

Trust plays a critical role in forming our beliefs as we do not have the ability or the time to check the evidence for everything. We have to take most things at face value; thus, trust makes us exceedingly vulnerable to accepting false information and beliefs as correct.

Detailed Resources

• Big Think: Humanity solved the “trust paradox” by going tribal — and paid a horrific price by David R. Samson (2023)
• Blog Post: Human Systems Are Almost Always Based On Trust by Dave Pollard (2023)
• HBR: Rethinking Trust by Roderick M. Kramer (2009)

Posts that link to this post

•  Pollution of the Global Information Ecosystem The contamination of information with false and misleading material
•  Exploring the Multifaceted Roles of Trust in Relationships and Society Without trust our civilization would collapse

POST NAVIGATION

CHAPTER NAVIGATION

SEARCH