Understanding Trust
Trust in an emergent phenomenon. That means no one owns trust. It emerges when a relationship reaches a certain level of maturity.
When you take a bus, you do not question the driving skills of your bus driver. You have a certain trust that you will reach your destination safely. There is certain information that you possess, which makes this peace of mind possible.
Inductive reasoning could show us that:
- You know the bus service company is running several buses like this and you did not hear any problems
- You saw the bus coming and you did not notice it speeding or running off the road
- You have taken the bus countless times and you hardly encountered any problems
However, this reasoning does not explain why.
Why you did not hear about any problems? Your bus service operator can be careless. But since you did not hear about any problems, they must be taking care of their buses.
Your bus driver could be drunk. But since you did not see the bus doing summersaults over the road, it is unlikely.
Hence, we can say that your relationship with the bus operator has matured. There is a trust that you will board the bus and safely get where you want to.
But the reason there is trust is that there is an alignment of motivation between you and your bus operator (and the driver, who is the representative of the bus operator in this case). Simply put, both you and your bus operator want the same thing.
You want to go somewhere but you can't do it on foot. The bus operator identifies this need and rents their bus to the passengers. The buses will take you where you want in exchange for a small amount of money. This money keeps the business flowing and gives a purpose to the people working for the bus operator service.
So your bus operator has all the incentives to get you where you want to. That is why you can trust that they will carefully keep their buses safe. That is why you can trust that they will train their drivers well. That is why you can trust that they will keep such incentives for their drivers so that they don't drink and drive.
This alignment of motivation is the real reason for the trust between the parties. Is it the only thing needed for the emergence of trust? It is the most important Probably not. We will continue to explore this in the coming posts.
Thanks for reading.