March 7, 2025 • 41 mins
Do we trust our fitness trackers too much? How do fraudsters gain our faith? Why do people trust podcasters? And would you trust a drug dealing nanny with a tambourine? Tim Harford is joined by trust expert Rachel Botsman to answer your questions.
Rachel lectures in trust at Oxford University and her new audiobook How To Trust and Be Trusted is available via Pushkin.fm and wherever audiobooks are sold.
We love hearing from you, so please keep your questions coming: tales@pushkin.fm.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, to trust is
to believe that someone is good and honest and will
not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable.
(00:35):
As loyal listeners to Cautionary Tales, you will have heard
countless stories of people who were not good and not
honest and did do harm people such as Ponzi scheme
fraudster Samuel israel I, art forger han Van Meghrin, and
the murderous Dr Harold Shipman. And yet these men were trusted.
(00:59):
Why I've told you about people who trusted in technology
when they shouldn't and those who didn't trust it when
they should Again, why to help us get to grips
with issues of trust, I am joined by my friend
and fellow Pushkin voice Rachel Botsman. Rachel lectures in Trust
at Oxford University, and her new audiobook, How to Trust
(01:22):
and Be Trusted, is available via Pushkin, dot FM or
wherever else audiobooks are sold.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hello Rachel, Hello Tim, it's nice to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's great to see you as well. So we have
asked listeners to Cautionary Tales and subscribe us to your
newsletter Rethink to get in touch for this special trust
based edition of Cautionary Questions. Before we dip into the mailbag, though,
please tell me why is this topic so interesting to you?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
For so many reasons?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
But I generally am interested in things that aren't always visible,
that are quite difficult to see or complex to understand.
And trust is one of those forces you can't see
or touch trust, and yet you feel it, you know
when it's gone. So I like topics that are very
(02:12):
complex and ever changing and that impacts so many different
areas of our lives. And I guess that's very true
for trust. It's hard to think of an air of
our life that isn't touched by trust.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, And I should say, just before we started recording,
you caught a glimpse of my script with that definition
of trust from the Cambridge Dictionary, and you said, well,
that's boring.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I think it's wrong as well, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, I'm listening.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Yeah. Well, first of all, good is a terrible word, right,
Like good is so subjective. Trust is subjective. But what
does good and honest mean? And something that is safe
and reliable? Well, I don't like that because it's making
a distinction that the way you trust someone and the
way you trust something. There's a distinction there which doesn't
seem right in the age of intelligent technology.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
But also so many.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Definitions of trust are about knowing what to expect or
knowing what the outcome is, and that is not really
the flexity of trust. The way I defined trust is
it's a confident relationship with the unknown. So trust it's
much more in the space of risk and uncertainty. And
I think it's when people think, oh, I know, I
(03:21):
can trust someone because they're good and they're honest, or
they're safe and reliable. That's when we make really bad decisions.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Fascinating. We will get into all of this, but before
the questions you can trust, cautionary tales to give you
this music, I'm sitting with Rachel Botsman, the author of
(04:02):
How To Trust and Be Trusted. Rachel, you ready for
some questions.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I am. I think they're good questions, so reveal to everybody.
You've already seen the questions.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's fine, it's fine, we're being trustworthy and transparent. Okay,
this question, which is a total surprise and you have
not seen before. I have not. She's seen the questions.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They were my newsletter, Tim, so I had to collect them. Okay.
Our first question, as you very well know, is from Lee.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
In Iowa, and Lee asks, is trust given, earned or
buried so deep in our psychee that we don't even know?
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Now?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
My sense is Lee kind of knows the answer to
this question. But it's a very interesting question because trust
is given and it's earned, and sometimes we do those
things without even thinking. We just lead with our intuition. Now,
the way that works can differ. You could give me
your trust by saying, come on this show, and then
(05:01):
I have to earn that trust back, so I have
to show up, and if that works, we form this
really nice.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Loop that's what we call by trust loop.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
But if you give my trust and it turns out
I don't know anything about this, that is broken. Also
can happen is you can give your trust to someone
and they can choose not to trust you back. Slightly different, right,
So you can choose to trust the leader in your
organization and they're not ready to trust you, and that
can really hurt as well. But most trust decisions we
(05:32):
do without even thinking about them, and that's because we
couldn't function if we're always thinking about giving an earning trust.
But particularly in new relationships. You want that loop to
be really, really healthy.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
This idea that it's buried so deep in our psyche
that we don't even know. Is it a very mysterious
process who we trust in, who we don't or or
do you think it's perfectly explicable.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It is often led by intuition and not information. You
don't always think about why am I trusting this person,
especially when you make decisions when you're under pressure or
you really want to trust that person. Then it is
buried deep within us. Also, our trust relations form very early,
around three or four. We develop our trust profile, which
(06:15):
is tied to risk and safety and protection. So so
much of that is environmental conditioning that is set from
a really young age.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So that suggests that there's a type of person who
is trusting or who is not trusting.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It is so around seventy percent of people are naturally trusting.
That is their instinct to trust, and that is a
lot to do with nurture and environment versus nature.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
They've learned from experience that most people do deserve to
be trusted.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, I can depend on you. I've got that feeling.
By the time children hit primary school, if they've never
felt that relationship teachers will talk about this right. They
have children that they don't know how to trust an
adult because they've never had that experience and can lead
to all kinds of unraveling. And thirty percent of people
won't give their trust until they have proof, so they
hold their trust back, which is actually quite tricky to
(07:05):
live life like that.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It reminds me of the famous marshmallow test. It's a
psychological experiment. These children were given a marshmallow and said,
you can eat this marshmallow now, or if you don't
eat the marshmallow while I go away, I'll be back
in a few minutes and I'll bring you another marshmallow.
And if you can wait, you get to eat two marshmallows.
(07:27):
And some kids eat the marshmallow and some kids don't.
The psychologists who led this experiment was Walter Michelle. Turns
out this was predictive of success later in life. So
the kids who had the will power to hold on
and wait for the second marshmallow, that was a wonderful
predictor of going on to be an incredibly successful human being.
There are lots of different arguments about what this really shows,
(07:50):
but one possible interpretation I would guess is some children
are told if a grown up promises to bring you
on marshmallow, they are actually going to show up with
a marshmallow. And others have learned from painful experience, do not,
in fact follow through on their promises, and you might
as well eat the marshmallow while you can.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
And some people they see that as an experiment in
self discipline, but I see it as an experiment in trust.
And you probably noticed him, but many people have tried
to recreate that experiment, and I can't remember when they
did it, but someone changed who the person was that
gave the instructions.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
This is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So a teacher, parent or a grandparent, someone that was
familiar to them, and a total stranger, and it turned
out the key variable was the person giving the instructions.
So that's because oh, I trust you, I trust that
you're going to bring the other marshmallow, versus my own
self discipline. So it was really interesting that the outcome
(08:47):
of the experiment changed depending on how much they trusted
the instructor.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
That's fantastic. You have a question from MJ who asks
why do people continue to trust someone after finding out
that they've been lied to.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
It's a very common one, both in personal relationships and
professional relationships. I tell a story in the book about
my parents who trusted her nanny. They hired her because
she said she belonged to the Salvation Army and she
liked helping people, and she had a Scottish accent, and
accents are very influential in how we trust. For a signal,
(09:27):
long story short, she came into her house, she was
wearing the uniform, she was carrying a tambourine.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
She lived with us for.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
About a year before they realized she was stealing money
and doing various other things. I mean, the story culminated
with her stealing our car and using it as a
getaway and an armed robbery.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So this did not end well.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Right, But the point is to the question she lied
to them so many times, And what I wanted to
find out for my dad is exactly this question, like
why did you continue to trust her? And they said, well,
she was actually a really good nanny, so in the
context of taking care of us, it didn't matter that
she was dealing drugs on the side. In the context
(10:08):
they needed her her, she was trustworthy and.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Was that also your experience that she was a good
she was.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
She was actually very friendly. But the thing is, like
when I was taping my dad, he did confess. And
this is a big one. It would have been inconvenient
to get rid of her. You know, she'd been in
our lives. She understood how everything worked, and so to
find someone else felt like effort. They were really busy
in their lives and they were traveling lots and their
(10:35):
businesses in that real period of pressure inconvenience is a
big one. But also we don't like the uncertainty of
getting rid of that person. So there is a certain
certainty of placing your trust in an untrustworthy person. And
I think that speaks volumes to how much as human
beings we hate the unknown.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Did your father know and decide it's fine, Okay, she
might be an armed robber, but she's a good nanny
and we haven't got time to find another honey now.
Or was it more a case if he was in
denial just choosing to overlook or or not wanting to
believe the evidence that were starting to accumulate.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I think it was a bit of both.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I think they were in denal so they didn't look
harder or they didn't look further into the situation, so
she once lied that her uncle had died. And then
so when her mum rang, you know my dad's and
I'm so sorry about your brother's loss, and she was like, well,
uncle Charlie's having a cup of tea a digestive right
(11:36):
next to me, and he just made all these excuses
for her that now when he looks back, he's like,
how did we miss so much? And it wasn't until
the police came to arrest him because it was our car,
And then they went into her room and they realized
the extent of the fraud because she'd been using his
credit cards. So yeah, I think they definitely turned a
(11:59):
blind eye to things they just didn't want to see.
And they're not stupid people, and they're very good parents
as well.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So I want to ask about the relations between wishful
thinking and misplaced trust. So a couple of cautionary tales
that come to my mind, both involving people who were
not stupid. So one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who famously
was fooled by a teenage girl into believing that there
were fairies at the bottom of her garden. Here are
(12:28):
some photos of the fairies, and he really wanted to
believe in fairies. He wanted to believe, more broadly, in
a spiritual realm. He'd lost his son in the Great
Influenza of nineteen eighteen. He'd lost his wife, she had
died quite young. He'd lost his mother, and he really
missed his mother. The idea that they might still be
out there somewhere was really important to him, and so
(12:50):
he was absurdly receptive to this idea of fairies at
the bottom of the garden, despite being not only a
doctor but also a semi professional photographer. That was wish
for thinking. And then another example, one of our early
cautionary tales involved the art forger han van Megrevin, and
he painted a Vermiir that was designed to appeal to
(13:14):
a particular art critic who had a particular theory about
Vermir's career. There were some paintings that had never been found,
so he'd speculated publicly that he thought Vermiir had painted
this particular Caravaggio influenced canvas, but we'll never know because
it'll never be found. And then along comes this Caravaggio
(13:35):
influenced canvas. It was a spearfishing attack really van Megrin
knew that this critic, Abraham Bradius, believed that this painting
had been painted, and so he was so vulnerable to
the con even though really objectively not convincing, but subjectively
perfect because of the power of wish well thinking.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, for wishfall thinking. I mean as a concept, it's
so interesting. Like when I think of wishful thinking, I
think of hope, and I think of possibility, and I
think of creativity and pegging your ideas and your mind
or something where you're not quite sure whether it exists.
And that's when most discovery exists. You kind of have
(14:16):
to be a wishful thinker to be creative, to be
an entrepreneur, to be a scientist. But where it gets
sad is where people play into the vulnerabilities. Think of
all the hacks people fall for around their health, like
the wishful thinking around this vitamin or this drink called
this thing is going to make you feel better.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So Maria Konnikova, who presents a Pushkin podcast Risky Business,
but who's also made a study of cons she told
me she doesn't want to be the kind of person
who could not be fooled by a con artist, because
to become that person, you also have to be a
(14:56):
person who doesn't trust anybody at all.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Maria's actually in the book because there's points she makes
that if you can't be wish for and you're not
open to being conn you're just cynical.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
And there's a.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Difference between that and just being totally gon and I
think the difference is that some people don't slow down
enough to get enough of the right information to make
a good decision.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And that's the real problem.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Where do you go to find reliable factor information to
make a decision in a high risk situation? So most
bad trust decisions are made very quickly.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Interesting. Thank you, Rachel, Rachel Botsman and I will be
back after the break for more questions of trust.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
We are back.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
You are listening to a special Q and a episode
of Cautionary Tales. I am Tim Harford. I'm here in
the studio with Rachel Botsman, the author of How To
Trust and Be Trusted, and we're answering your questions on trust.
Another question, yes, okay, right? Andy in Connecticut writes that
my whole life, people, often complete strangers, have been entrusting
(16:12):
me with their secrets. They always say the same thing.
I've never told anyone this. I don't know why I'm
telling you. I don't probe, I don't pressure. Most of
the time we're just chatting. The thing is they are right,
they can trust me. I'm not a judgmental person, and
I'm dedicated to the principle of keeping secrets. As they
say in Seinfeld, it's in the vault. But his question is,
(16:37):
how do they know that after just fifteen minutes of chatting.
Is there such a thing as a trust aura? I
love this question. It's quite a weird question. I like it.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I love this question too because Andy I have the
same I know if it's a gift or a problem
because I can't tell you the stuff that people tell me,
whether it's friends. But then yeah, like total strangers on
a plane, this happens to me a lot.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So I'm with Andy.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
I don't think it's like energy and his aura. But
he's probably not giving himself enough credit that it's his presence.
It's the way he's listening, it's the questions that he's asked,
that he's genuinely curious about that other person, and that
other person feels a very quick sense.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Of confidence in them, and you have.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
To be really careful because the worst thing is, you
know when people say, I shouldn't tell you this because
someone told me it in secret, And what goes over
my head is, I'm never telling you anything, right, because
you've just you've opened the vault.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
The relationship between trust and gossip and trust and secrets
is an interesting one. If you spread a bit of gossip,
on the one hand, you are clearly violating trust. You're
telling a secret that you shouldn't be telling. But at
the same time, you're building a sort of conspiracy with
the person you're trusting with the gossip. You're trusting them
(17:53):
not to tell other people that you were the source.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Of the gossip. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
But I think once that trust has been broken, once
it's broken, Yeah, they told you and you're telling me,
so you've kind of given me permission to tell someone else,
like you've broken the chain. But you know what's really interesting,
I think secrets aren't the enemy of trust. Actually, people
that you really trust should be able to keep secrets.
(18:17):
It's deception. And I think once you actually tell someone
else's secret, you've come out of that space of secrecy
into the place of deception. And this applies to leaders
as well, that they should be able to have secrets
if we trust them. It's when they deceive us that's
what's really damaging to trust.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah. At the same time, if you tell somebody a
secret and you you confide on them and then you
say no, you're not allowed to tell anybody else. I've
heard this described by Dan Savage, the advice columnist. It's like,
if you're queer, you're in the closet, you tell somebody else,
but they're not allowed to betray your secret either. Well,
now they're in the closet with you. So in the
(18:56):
sense that secrets is the way Dan Savage expresses it,
it's a kind of a burden that you haven't halved'
you've forced on them.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
I think it's actually a really good point because a
good friend or someone who's very self aware, they were
asked for permission. I'd really love to share something with you.
It might impact how you see so and so. Is
it okay? I think sometimes we are in a culture
of oversharing, and we don't sometimes ask for that permission
(19:26):
to offload that thing on the other person, and therefore
they can't carry it they have to break the trust.
I have one for you, tim that I think will
be of interest. It's from a listener called Nagar, and
she writes, Dear cautionary Crewe, I'm curious about trust within cults.
I was in Montana during the heyday of the Church
Universal Triumphant. Their leader, Elizabeth Claire Prophet, famously predicted the
(19:50):
end of the world and ordered all of her followers
to take extreme measures to be prepared for it. I
remember this story when it also famously felt to take place.
Her followers didn't seem to lose any of their trust
in her. Instead, they stuck with her under the rationale
that her prediction and their evasive action had in fact
(20:12):
prevented the predicted apocalypse from taking place. How can this
kind of blind trust prevail in the face of such
obvious and abundance evidence to the contrary. I've wondered about
this story, so I'd love for you to answer this question.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Well, I'll have a go. I mean, it's really an
exact replay of an earlier incident involving an end of
the world cult called the Seekers, which operated in Chicago
in the nineteen fifties, and like a lot of other
cults that the world's going to end, the aliens are
(20:48):
going to come, they'll destroy the world. But if you
believe in the message of the aliens, and you act
in the right way, and you remove metal items, take
the clips out of your bra take the zip out
of your trousers, and the aliens will preserve you. And
it's all going to happen at midnight on I think
it was December the twenty third, nineteen fifty three, something
like this. It was a very specific date. What's interesting
(21:09):
about that cult is a group of social psychologists had
found out about them and sent some grad students to
infiltrate the cult and basically be there on the day
when the aliens were supposed to arrive. And it's a
very famous book about this episode called When Prophecy Fails
because spoiler, the aliens didn't come. The world didn't end.
(21:33):
And so we covered this story in a very early
episode of Cautionary Tales called Buried by the Wall Street Crash,
which was mostly about great economist Irving Fisher, who predicted
that stocks have reached a new and permanently high plateau.
He predicted that two weeks before the Wall Street Crash,
(21:53):
began in nineteen twenty nine and wiped eighty nine percent
off the value of stocks and destroyed Fisher's reputation. It's
all about do you change your mind when your forecast
went wrong? And Fisher didn't, a lot of these cultists didn't.
And the psychological theory that was promulgated was called cognitive dissonance.
(22:15):
So the basic idea is you've got two different ideas
in your head. So one is I believed this cult
leader who told me that the aliens were going to come,
and the other belief is I'm a perfectly sensible human
being who does not make bad choices. And then when
those two beliefs are in conflict, you've got to change
(22:35):
one of them to ease the cognitive dissonance. So which
one are you going to change? Are you going to say, Okay,
turns out I'm an idiot, or are you going to say, actually,
there's some reason, there's some excuse I'm going to make
on behalf of this cult leader. And in this particular case,
the people who were most committed to the cult beforehand,
who you might have expected to feel most betrayed and
(22:55):
be most angry when the prophecy failed Actually, they doubled down,
so they started issuing press releases, they started phoning the journalists. Previously,
they hadn't been very interested in talking to the press,
but at the very moment where the whole thing just
seemed absurd, that's when they started calling the Chicago Tribune
and going, hey, great news, aliens haven't destroyed the world.
And it's the same story as Naeger is relating. Because
(23:18):
of our prayers, because of what we did, we successfully
averted the apocalypse. Aren't we brilliant? That's the theory of
cognitive dissonance. It's incredible. But yeah, all I can say
is Naga's experience is this is not the first time
this has happened.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I think it's one of the most fascinating theories because
it's like the wrestling of the mind. But it's really
helpful to understand when it comes to trust, because so
much of our lives focuses on what we believe, not
why we believe things, and understanding the motivations behind your belief,
(23:53):
why you need to believe something is true, why you
really want to trust that person. It explains misplaced trust
so well. This is also really helpful in terms of
understanding other people that if you focus on what someone believes,
it leads to judgment, right, those silly people who believe
in that cult or in that politician.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
But if you really dig deep and say why does
that person need to believe that, it's usually because of some.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Air of vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
There's usually some hole in their life that this thing
or this person is trying to feel. And then you
come from a place of compassion, not from judgment. They
have to place their trust somewhere. They may not be
placing it in the most trustworthy thing.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I think. Another point that it's worth emphasizing is that
we are all influenced by the people around us, and fundamentally,
a lot of what we believe is based not on
first principles, but on our trust in some authority or another.
So a friend of mine believes that vaccines cause autism.
She's wrong, but you know she believes it. I believe
(25:03):
that carbon dioxide emissions cause climate change, and I'm right. However,
the reason that she believes that vaccines cause autism and
that I believe that carbon dioxide emissions cause climate change
the same basic reason, which is that there are people
who we trust who've told us that, and they've presented
(25:24):
us with evidence that makes sense to us, but that
we're not really qualified to understand. And I believe what
they believe, not because I've read every scientific paper, not
because I understand climate physics, but because that's where I've
placed my trust.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Ready for another question, Yeah, let's go for it. We've
got one from another Andy, and this Andy writes that
he is a massive fan of yours. Rachel is a
man of taste. He is a fraud manager, and he
writes that I often find that victims of fraud are
too trusting of their scammers, with some evidence suggesting that
(26:02):
some victims get scammed multiple times. So the question what
advice would you offer to encourage more trust in good
fraud advice and to have less trust of the nasty
little blighters who commit fraud.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
So really hard one to answer, because I feel like
the foldsters now replicate the trust signals, So like a
bank sending you a text to authorize a payment, they're
using the same mechanisms for you to give your trust
to the wrong personal thing. I fell for one the
(26:40):
other day, and it's like you have a pass l
but someone didn't pay the whatever duty, click on this
link put in your credit card.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
So I did, and that.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Was so stupid, But it's because I was doing something
else and I didn't really think, well, who wouldn't pay
tax and who wouldn't pay the duty? And I think
it's a huge societal problem as to how we have
better signals and marks to.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Know when it's coming from a trustworthy source.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
So in my book How to Make the World That
Up that the Data Detective in the US, I argued
that a lot of the mistakes we make when we're
thinking about statistics that are presented to us on social media,
they're basically the same mistakes we make when we've presented
with any factual claim. We are rushed, we are angry
(27:27):
or otherwise emotional, and that is very often why we
believe things that we shouldn't believe, because we've actually not
got the headspace and the calm to really take a
step back and ponder and think seriously. So the first
piece of advice I give people when they're thinking about
a statistical claim is search your feelings. Yeah, quote my
(27:48):
all time statistical hero, Darth Vader. Searchial feelings, any emotional
reaction is it's all perfectly valid, but it's not necessarily
putting you in the space to logically evaluate what's been
put in front of you. And actually, I think the
same thing is true for that email that comes in
that says, oh, by the way, you've sent three hundred
and ninety nine dollars to somebody via PayPal. If you
(28:10):
didn't send this transaction, just click here and we'll fix it.
Just slow down a moment. Is that email real? So
it's giving yourself that time, it's noticing your emotional reaction.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I think that's really good advice.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Ready for another question. This is absolutely your area of expertise.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I think I think this is something I actually shared.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Well, the meme may or may not have come from you, Rachel,
but in any case, Betsy from California has sent it
to us, and the meme she has sent to us
says this nineteen ninety eight, don't get into a car
with strangers two thousand and five. Don't meet strangers from
the internet twenty eighteen. Use Uber to summon a stranger
(28:52):
from the Internet and get into their car. She says.
Many transactions online and off rely on rating systems as
a proxy for trust. How can we make these systems
more reliable and less vulnerable to scams and fraud. It's
a good question, Betty, is my cover te this question?
I mean, this is how I got into studying trust
(29:14):
was two thousand and six. I first started looking at
how trust works in these platforms. The investors were really
interested in the efficiency to match supply and demand. So
you have something and I want it, and we can
now be matched. But the piece that no one was
studying was the trust signals, the trust mechanisms. This is amazing,
like how are we going to trust strangers? And to
(29:36):
Betsy's point, like things that we described as hitch hiking
and dangerous have now become these massive, multi billion dollar platforms.
Like that's a remarkable thing. Now, the thing that is
as amazing is that the trust systems, or the reputation
systems haven't improved that much. Yes, we have far better insurance,
(29:58):
we have far better identity checks, so checking this person
who they are, who they say they are.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
We have better.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Payment mechanisms, but the repute pation system is still Think
about eBay and the five stars that were given by
Haunted Pirate. We haven't come that far. Now, there are
some that have got a lot better. Ebimi introduced the
double blind system, right, so you wouldn't just give a
good review to get a good review. They introduced context,
(30:28):
so if I'm traveling with my two kids and I'm
looking at a place, that's a completely different context than
say a business traveler. And they just introduced very good
filters and markers and categories that men it became less subjective.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Although from my subjective experience, no really bad experiences, but
several way you get there and you're like, oh, yeah, okay,
I see how this looks so good on the photos,
but it's kind of not that great, and then in
the end you're like, I really want to give a
three star review, or maybe it's just easier to click
(31:04):
five stars and contribute to the problem.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yes, I stayed in one in Australia recently and it
described itself as a remote farm getaway, but it was
literally ten minutes from the equivalent of the twenty five
the traffic right, not really the remote farm cicadas I
had in my head. And they also failed to mention
that it came with a cat. Now, my friend who
(31:27):
was staying with me is very allergic to cats, and
I was like, I can't leave a bad review because
this person is really dependent on the income.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Sounds like they should mention the cat, the cat and
the motorway.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
But that feeling of guilt is wrong because you actually
have a responsibility to the community to protect others.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
But the feeling of guilt is wrong. But it's also real, real,
and that's a problem for these kind of decentralized trust platforms.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
It is, and also who's responsible for when it goes wrong.
We still haven't solved that problem.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Thank you, Rachel. We are going to take a quick
break and we'll be back soon with more questions of trust.
We are back. I am sitting with Rachel Botsman and
we are answering your questions. I should reveal we have
(32:24):
been for a run together.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
We have you are very well dressed. No one has
ever accused me of being well dressed. I've meant he
had lots of clothes on.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
It was a cold day and we weren't running that fast.
But I wanted to ask about fitness trackers because I've
become fascinated by these things, these connected watches that will
measure your heartbeat. They're really just the last few years,
but they're now ubiquitous. My watch really helped me to
run more and to vary my runs and so on.
(32:53):
But I'm aware that there are certain risks that first
of all, I might not be able to trust all
the data I'm getting from the watch. Second, I might
not trust the data the watch is revealing about me,
or third that this training program might not be very
well suited in principle, which knows I'm an old man,
but in practice it doesn't seem to take that into consideration.
(33:13):
So this idea of trusting your body to this thing
on your wrist, that's what I wanted to get your
reflections about.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah, so can I ask do you feel like the
watches in control of you?
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Hmm, No, But I do. I do care about what
the watch thinks.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I do too.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
I do like to sort of get enough activity. I
don't really care about calories as such, but the watch's
estimated calorie consumption is sort of an indicator to me
of how active I've been. I kind of like to
get that to a particular number, and I get a
bit fidgety if I haven't. And there is this absurdity,
of course, if sometimes you forget to wear the watch,
or you forget to switch it on, and actually it
(33:56):
doesn't matter because you're still getting the exercise whether or
not the watch is paying attention. But actually, of course
it does matter.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
So I've run with people where they say, oh, this
one doesn't count. I'm like, what do you mean in
the like because I haven't got my watch, and I'm like, ah,
it's gone a bit fast.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I just talked to a sleep scientist at Oxford who
did an experiment where he got people who were having
trouble sleeping and gave them a sleep tracker. In the morning,
they were asked, well, how are you feeling. Are you
feeling sharp, You're feeling full of energy, and the same
question was asked at twelve and at three, But after
(34:31):
they'd first given their feedback how you feeling, the watch
would tell them, Yeah, you had a terrible night sleep
or you had a brilliant night's sleep. At the end
of the day they went back to the sleep clinic
and he said, okay, I'm sorry, but all of that
was a lie. But what people were told by this
sleep tracker in the morning governed how they felt all day.
Totally have a good night's sleep. Your watch told you
(34:53):
had a bad night's sleep, you will act as though
you had a bad night's sleep. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
It does really tie to trust, because sometimes we really
trust things when we want to be in control. And
so you know, you can see like amazing indicators and
it is very rewarding, like if you're putting the work
in all these things, especially as you get older, you
have to work quite hard at it. But I do
think when it takes the enjoyment out of it, where
you can't run without the watch, I know someone who
(35:19):
runs with three a whoop, a garment, and an apple, okay,
And that is obsession and that is like clinging onto
something so tightly. And anyone that's done sport knows that.
The magic thing about sport is it's a journey into
the unknown. It's the ultimate trust in yourself. That's why
I love long distance running, is that you don't know
(35:41):
what's going to happen when you get over sixteen seventeen
eighteen kilometers, Like it's so interesting where your mind goes
and the.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Watch I do, what's going to happen? Stop, you're going
to stup? Yeah? I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I usually need the toilet around them, but that's probably
too much information. But the point is, like a lot
of trust is it's a confident relationship with the unknown. Right,
So my watch can tell me exactly today what my
marathon time is. And it could be boiling hot, it
could be freezing cold, my niker bloke, it could trip
on a cut what. So many things can happen, Like,
I'm gonna be disappointed if I hold onto that time.
(36:20):
Too much trust in fitness trackers, bad bad thing. I'm
wearing three. Do you know some of the insurance plans
like if you measure all these steps that they'll give
you discounts and things. But I've seen people in airports
tapping their feet if you're not seeing that, they take
the watch off, they put it round their ankle to
keep up their step count.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I've seen it on the train people do that.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Like that's that's too much, right. I have one last
question for you, Tim. I love this question. It caught
my eye. It's from Cayenne in New York State. So, Tim,
why do people trust podcasters so much? Even on topics
they aren't knowledgeable about?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Ah, I feel seen. I mean, there's a good question,
but I think that people trust cautionary tails and they
trust other podcasters because trust is often placed not on
the basis of a rational assessment of expertise on other intuitions.
(37:22):
So do I like this person? Do I know this person?
People have me in their ears every week they get
used to my voice. I feel like someone they really know,
and somebody you really know is somebody you can trust, right,
So that's part of it. Or maybe I sound fluent,
I have a nice accent. I don't stumble over my words.
(37:43):
Of course, I don't stumble over my words, because I've
got a producer cutting all the uns and the ears
out or retaking if I stumble. But because I sound fluent,
well that also sounds trustworthy. And these are just proxies
for actually being deserving of trust. But I think they're
proxies that that work. You're the expert on trust, Does
that make sense to you?
Speaker 3 (38:04):
So if you think about the way trust used to
work was who that person, and war was what they
were saying, and then lastly, how they made that person feel,
and that has completely been inverted. So Number one is
we make most trust decisions, particularly through social media or
audio content, based on feeling how that person makes you feel,
(38:29):
and then who they are and then what they say.
And that's why people that make us feel comfortable. You know,
there's some podcasts and it does literally feel like Kirsy
Young does this, like if I'm stressed, just turn But
there's others that are funny, and there's others that are salacious.
But it's such an important point because people with feeling
(38:50):
that understand that mechanism how I make you feel is
whether you're going to engage with me, they are the
ones rising to the top more so than ever before.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
So there we go. Thank you so much for sending
in your questions, and thank you so much to Rachel
Batsman for answering them. Rachel, this has been a lot
of fun.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
It has. Yes, we've gone all over the place.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
So Rachel's audiobook is How to Trust and Be Trusted.
It's available via pushkin. Rachel, you also have a newsletter
remind us of the name and where people can sign
up for it.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
It's called Rethink and it's on substack and I love
writing it, I genuinely do.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
We will be back again next week with another classic
episode of cautionary Tales. In the meantime, if you have
a question for us for our next episode of cautionary questions,
please send it in the email addresses tales at Pushkin
dot fm. That is t a l e s at
Pushkin dot fm. Send in those questions because we do
(39:48):
love hearing from you. Thank you for listening. For a
full list of our sources, see the show notes at
Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales has written by me Tim Harford,
with Andrew Wright, Plis Fine and Ryan Dilly. It's produced
(40:11):
by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and
original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound
design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Bend
A Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice
talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah jupp
(40:32):
Messeam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and rufus Wright. The show also
wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Pautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardore Studios in London
(40:54):
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fam slash
plus
Pushkin. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, to trust is
to believe that someone is good and honest and will
not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable.
(00:35):
As loyal listeners to Cautionary Tales, you will have heard
countless stories of people who were not good and not
honest and did do harm people such as Ponzi scheme
fraudster Samuel israel I, art forger han Van Meghrin, and
the murderous Dr Harold Shipman. And yet these men were trusted.
(00:59):
Why I've told you about people who trusted in technology
when they shouldn't and those who didn't trust it when
they should Again, why to help us get to grips
with issues of trust, I am joined by my friend
and fellow Pushkin voice Rachel Botsman. Rachel lectures in Trust
at Oxford University, and her new audiobook, How to Trust
(01:22):
and Be Trusted, is available via Pushkin, dot FM or
wherever else audiobooks are sold.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hello Rachel, Hello Tim, it's nice to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's great to see you as well. So we have
asked listeners to Cautionary Tales and subscribe us to your
newsletter Rethink to get in touch for this special trust
based edition of Cautionary Questions. Before we dip into the mailbag, though,
please tell me why is this topic so interesting to you?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
For so many reasons?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
But I generally am interested in things that aren't always visible,
that are quite difficult to see or complex to understand.
And trust is one of those forces you can't see
or touch trust, and yet you feel it, you know
when it's gone. So I like topics that are very
(02:12):
complex and ever changing and that impacts so many different
areas of our lives. And I guess that's very true
for trust. It's hard to think of an air of
our life that isn't touched by trust.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, And I should say, just before we started recording,
you caught a glimpse of my script with that definition
of trust from the Cambridge Dictionary, and you said, well,
that's boring.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I think it's wrong as well, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, I'm listening.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Yeah. Well, first of all, good is a terrible word, right,
Like good is so subjective. Trust is subjective. But what
does good and honest mean? And something that is safe
and reliable? Well, I don't like that because it's making
a distinction that the way you trust someone and the
way you trust something. There's a distinction there which doesn't
seem right in the age of intelligent technology.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
But also so many.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Definitions of trust are about knowing what to expect or
knowing what the outcome is, and that is not really
the flexity of trust. The way I defined trust is
it's a confident relationship with the unknown. So trust it's
much more in the space of risk and uncertainty. And
I think it's when people think, oh, I know, I
(03:21):
can trust someone because they're good and they're honest, or
they're safe and reliable. That's when we make really bad decisions.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Fascinating. We will get into all of this, but before
the questions you can trust, cautionary tales to give you
this music, I'm sitting with Rachel Botsman, the author of
(04:02):
How To Trust and Be Trusted. Rachel, you ready for
some questions.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I am. I think they're good questions, so reveal to everybody.
You've already seen the questions.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's fine, it's fine, we're being trustworthy and transparent. Okay,
this question, which is a total surprise and you have
not seen before. I have not. She's seen the questions.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They were my newsletter, Tim, so I had to collect them. Okay.
Our first question, as you very well know, is from Lee.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
In Iowa, and Lee asks, is trust given, earned or
buried so deep in our psychee that we don't even know?
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Now?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
My sense is Lee kind of knows the answer to
this question. But it's a very interesting question because trust
is given and it's earned, and sometimes we do those
things without even thinking. We just lead with our intuition. Now,
the way that works can differ. You could give me
your trust by saying, come on this show, and then
(05:01):
I have to earn that trust back, so I have
to show up, and if that works, we form this
really nice.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Loop that's what we call by trust loop.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
But if you give my trust and it turns out
I don't know anything about this, that is broken. Also
can happen is you can give your trust to someone
and they can choose not to trust you back. Slightly different, right,
So you can choose to trust the leader in your
organization and they're not ready to trust you, and that
can really hurt as well. But most trust decisions we
(05:32):
do without even thinking about them, and that's because we
couldn't function if we're always thinking about giving an earning trust.
But particularly in new relationships. You want that loop to
be really, really healthy.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
This idea that it's buried so deep in our psyche
that we don't even know. Is it a very mysterious
process who we trust in, who we don't or or
do you think it's perfectly explicable.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It is often led by intuition and not information. You
don't always think about why am I trusting this person,
especially when you make decisions when you're under pressure or
you really want to trust that person. Then it is
buried deep within us. Also, our trust relations form very early,
around three or four. We develop our trust profile, which
(06:15):
is tied to risk and safety and protection. So so
much of that is environmental conditioning that is set from
a really young age.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So that suggests that there's a type of person who
is trusting or who is not trusting.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It is so around seventy percent of people are naturally trusting.
That is their instinct to trust, and that is a
lot to do with nurture and environment versus nature.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
They've learned from experience that most people do deserve to
be trusted.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, I can depend on you. I've got that feeling.
By the time children hit primary school, if they've never
felt that relationship teachers will talk about this right. They
have children that they don't know how to trust an
adult because they've never had that experience and can lead
to all kinds of unraveling. And thirty percent of people
won't give their trust until they have proof, so they
hold their trust back, which is actually quite tricky to
(07:05):
live life like that.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It reminds me of the famous marshmallow test. It's a
psychological experiment. These children were given a marshmallow and said,
you can eat this marshmallow now, or if you don't
eat the marshmallow while I go away, I'll be back
in a few minutes and I'll bring you another marshmallow.
And if you can wait, you get to eat two marshmallows.
(07:27):
And some kids eat the marshmallow and some kids don't.
The psychologists who led this experiment was Walter Michelle. Turns
out this was predictive of success later in life. So
the kids who had the will power to hold on
and wait for the second marshmallow, that was a wonderful
predictor of going on to be an incredibly successful human being.
There are lots of different arguments about what this really shows,
(07:50):
but one possible interpretation I would guess is some children
are told if a grown up promises to bring you
on marshmallow, they are actually going to show up with
a marshmallow. And others have learned from painful experience, do not,
in fact follow through on their promises, and you might
as well eat the marshmallow while you can.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
And some people they see that as an experiment in
self discipline, but I see it as an experiment in trust.
And you probably noticed him, but many people have tried
to recreate that experiment, and I can't remember when they
did it, but someone changed who the person was that
gave the instructions.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
This is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So a teacher, parent or a grandparent, someone that was
familiar to them, and a total stranger, and it turned
out the key variable was the person giving the instructions.
So that's because oh, I trust you, I trust that
you're going to bring the other marshmallow, versus my own
self discipline. So it was really interesting that the outcome
(08:47):
of the experiment changed depending on how much they trusted
the instructor.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
That's fantastic. You have a question from MJ who asks
why do people continue to trust someone after finding out
that they've been lied to.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
It's a very common one, both in personal relationships and
professional relationships. I tell a story in the book about
my parents who trusted her nanny. They hired her because
she said she belonged to the Salvation Army and she
liked helping people, and she had a Scottish accent, and
accents are very influential in how we trust. For a signal,
(09:27):
long story short, she came into her house, she was
wearing the uniform, she was carrying a tambourine.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
She lived with us for.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
About a year before they realized she was stealing money
and doing various other things. I mean, the story culminated
with her stealing our car and using it as a
getaway and an armed robbery.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So this did not end well.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Right, But the point is to the question she lied
to them so many times, And what I wanted to
find out for my dad is exactly this question, like
why did you continue to trust her? And they said, well,
she was actually a really good nanny, so in the
context of taking care of us, it didn't matter that
she was dealing drugs on the side. In the context
(10:08):
they needed her her, she was trustworthy and.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Was that also your experience that she was a good
she was.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
She was actually very friendly. But the thing is, like
when I was taping my dad, he did confess. And
this is a big one. It would have been inconvenient
to get rid of her. You know, she'd been in
our lives. She understood how everything worked, and so to
find someone else felt like effort. They were really busy
in their lives and they were traveling lots and their
(10:35):
businesses in that real period of pressure inconvenience is a
big one. But also we don't like the uncertainty of
getting rid of that person. So there is a certain
certainty of placing your trust in an untrustworthy person. And
I think that speaks volumes to how much as human
beings we hate the unknown.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Did your father know and decide it's fine, Okay, she
might be an armed robber, but she's a good nanny
and we haven't got time to find another honey now.
Or was it more a case if he was in
denial just choosing to overlook or or not wanting to
believe the evidence that were starting to accumulate.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I think it was a bit of both.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I think they were in denal so they didn't look
harder or they didn't look further into the situation, so
she once lied that her uncle had died. And then
so when her mum rang, you know my dad's and
I'm so sorry about your brother's loss, and she was like, well,
uncle Charlie's having a cup of tea a digestive right
(11:36):
next to me, and he just made all these excuses
for her that now when he looks back, he's like,
how did we miss so much? And it wasn't until
the police came to arrest him because it was our car,
And then they went into her room and they realized
the extent of the fraud because she'd been using his
credit cards. So yeah, I think they definitely turned a
(11:59):
blind eye to things they just didn't want to see.
And they're not stupid people, and they're very good parents
as well.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So I want to ask about the relations between wishful
thinking and misplaced trust. So a couple of cautionary tales
that come to my mind, both involving people who were
not stupid. So one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who famously
was fooled by a teenage girl into believing that there
were fairies at the bottom of her garden. Here are
(12:28):
some photos of the fairies, and he really wanted to
believe in fairies. He wanted to believe, more broadly, in
a spiritual realm. He'd lost his son in the Great
Influenza of nineteen eighteen. He'd lost his wife, she had
died quite young. He'd lost his mother, and he really
missed his mother. The idea that they might still be
out there somewhere was really important to him, and so
(12:50):
he was absurdly receptive to this idea of fairies at
the bottom of the garden, despite being not only a
doctor but also a semi professional photographer. That was wish
for thinking. And then another example, one of our early
cautionary tales involved the art forger han van Megrevin, and
he painted a Vermiir that was designed to appeal to
(13:14):
a particular art critic who had a particular theory about
Vermir's career. There were some paintings that had never been found,
so he'd speculated publicly that he thought Vermiir had painted
this particular Caravaggio influenced canvas, but we'll never know because
it'll never be found. And then along comes this Caravaggio
(13:35):
influenced canvas. It was a spearfishing attack really van Megrin
knew that this critic, Abraham Bradius, believed that this painting
had been painted, and so he was so vulnerable to
the con even though really objectively not convincing, but subjectively
perfect because of the power of wish well thinking.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, for wishfall thinking. I mean as a concept, it's
so interesting. Like when I think of wishful thinking, I
think of hope, and I think of possibility, and I
think of creativity and pegging your ideas and your mind
or something where you're not quite sure whether it exists.
And that's when most discovery exists. You kind of have
(14:16):
to be a wishful thinker to be creative, to be
an entrepreneur, to be a scientist. But where it gets
sad is where people play into the vulnerabilities. Think of
all the hacks people fall for around their health, like
the wishful thinking around this vitamin or this drink called
this thing is going to make you feel better.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So Maria Konnikova, who presents a Pushkin podcast Risky Business,
but who's also made a study of cons she told
me she doesn't want to be the kind of person
who could not be fooled by a con artist, because
to become that person, you also have to be a
(14:56):
person who doesn't trust anybody at all.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Maria's actually in the book because there's points she makes
that if you can't be wish for and you're not
open to being conn you're just cynical.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
And there's a.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Difference between that and just being totally gon and I
think the difference is that some people don't slow down
enough to get enough of the right information to make
a good decision.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And that's the real problem.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Where do you go to find reliable factor information to
make a decision in a high risk situation? So most
bad trust decisions are made very quickly.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Interesting. Thank you, Rachel, Rachel Botsman and I will be
back after the break for more questions of trust.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
We are back.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
You are listening to a special Q and a episode
of Cautionary Tales. I am Tim Harford. I'm here in
the studio with Rachel Botsman, the author of How To
Trust and Be Trusted, and we're answering your questions on trust.
Another question, yes, okay, right? Andy in Connecticut writes that
my whole life, people, often complete strangers, have been entrusting
(16:12):
me with their secrets. They always say the same thing.
I've never told anyone this. I don't know why I'm
telling you. I don't probe, I don't pressure. Most of
the time we're just chatting. The thing is they are right,
they can trust me. I'm not a judgmental person, and
I'm dedicated to the principle of keeping secrets. As they
say in Seinfeld, it's in the vault. But his question is,
(16:37):
how do they know that after just fifteen minutes of chatting.
Is there such a thing as a trust aura? I
love this question. It's quite a weird question. I like it.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
I love this question too because Andy I have the
same I know if it's a gift or a problem
because I can't tell you the stuff that people tell me,
whether it's friends. But then yeah, like total strangers on
a plane, this happens to me a lot.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So I'm with Andy.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
I don't think it's like energy and his aura. But
he's probably not giving himself enough credit that it's his presence.
It's the way he's listening, it's the questions that he's asked,
that he's genuinely curious about that other person, and that
other person feels a very quick sense.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Of confidence in them, and you have.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
To be really careful because the worst thing is, you
know when people say, I shouldn't tell you this because
someone told me it in secret, And what goes over
my head is, I'm never telling you anything, right, because
you've just you've opened the vault.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
The relationship between trust and gossip and trust and secrets
is an interesting one. If you spread a bit of gossip,
on the one hand, you are clearly violating trust. You're
telling a secret that you shouldn't be telling. But at
the same time, you're building a sort of conspiracy with
the person you're trusting with the gossip. You're trusting them
(17:53):
not to tell other people that you were the source.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Of the gossip. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
But I think once that trust has been broken, once
it's broken, Yeah, they told you and you're telling me,
so you've kind of given me permission to tell someone else,
like you've broken the chain. But you know what's really interesting,
I think secrets aren't the enemy of trust. Actually, people
that you really trust should be able to keep secrets.
(18:17):
It's deception. And I think once you actually tell someone
else's secret, you've come out of that space of secrecy
into the place of deception. And this applies to leaders
as well, that they should be able to have secrets
if we trust them. It's when they deceive us that's
what's really damaging to trust.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah. At the same time, if you tell somebody a
secret and you you confide on them and then you
say no, you're not allowed to tell anybody else. I've
heard this described by Dan Savage, the advice columnist. It's like,
if you're queer, you're in the closet, you tell somebody else,
but they're not allowed to betray your secret either. Well,
now they're in the closet with you. So in the
(18:56):
sense that secrets is the way Dan Savage expresses it,
it's a kind of a burden that you haven't halved'
you've forced on them.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
I think it's actually a really good point because a
good friend or someone who's very self aware, they were
asked for permission. I'd really love to share something with you.
It might impact how you see so and so. Is
it okay? I think sometimes we are in a culture
of oversharing, and we don't sometimes ask for that permission
(19:26):
to offload that thing on the other person, and therefore
they can't carry it they have to break the trust.
I have one for you, tim that I think will
be of interest. It's from a listener called Nagar, and
she writes, Dear cautionary Crewe, I'm curious about trust within cults.
I was in Montana during the heyday of the Church
Universal Triumphant. Their leader, Elizabeth Claire Prophet, famously predicted the
(19:50):
end of the world and ordered all of her followers
to take extreme measures to be prepared for it. I
remember this story when it also famously felt to take place.
Her followers didn't seem to lose any of their trust
in her. Instead, they stuck with her under the rationale
that her prediction and their evasive action had in fact
(20:12):
prevented the predicted apocalypse from taking place. How can this
kind of blind trust prevail in the face of such
obvious and abundance evidence to the contrary. I've wondered about
this story, so I'd love for you to answer this question.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Well, I'll have a go. I mean, it's really an
exact replay of an earlier incident involving an end of
the world cult called the Seekers, which operated in Chicago
in the nineteen fifties, and like a lot of other
cults that the world's going to end, the aliens are
(20:48):
going to come, they'll destroy the world. But if you
believe in the message of the aliens, and you act
in the right way, and you remove metal items, take
the clips out of your bra take the zip out
of your trousers, and the aliens will preserve you. And
it's all going to happen at midnight on I think
it was December the twenty third, nineteen fifty three, something
like this. It was a very specific date. What's interesting
(21:09):
about that cult is a group of social psychologists had
found out about them and sent some grad students to
infiltrate the cult and basically be there on the day
when the aliens were supposed to arrive. And it's a
very famous book about this episode called When Prophecy Fails
because spoiler, the aliens didn't come. The world didn't end.
(21:33):
And so we covered this story in a very early
episode of Cautionary Tales called Buried by the Wall Street Crash,
which was mostly about great economist Irving Fisher, who predicted
that stocks have reached a new and permanently high plateau.
He predicted that two weeks before the Wall Street Crash,
(21:53):
began in nineteen twenty nine and wiped eighty nine percent
off the value of stocks and destroyed Fisher's reputation. It's
all about do you change your mind when your forecast
went wrong? And Fisher didn't, a lot of these cultists didn't.
And the psychological theory that was promulgated was called cognitive dissonance.
(22:15):
So the basic idea is you've got two different ideas
in your head. So one is I believed this cult
leader who told me that the aliens were going to come,
and the other belief is I'm a perfectly sensible human
being who does not make bad choices. And then when
those two beliefs are in conflict, you've got to change
(22:35):
one of them to ease the cognitive dissonance. So which
one are you going to change? Are you going to say, Okay,
turns out I'm an idiot, or are you going to say, actually,
there's some reason, there's some excuse I'm going to make
on behalf of this cult leader. And in this particular case,
the people who were most committed to the cult beforehand,
who you might have expected to feel most betrayed and
(22:55):
be most angry when the prophecy failed Actually, they doubled down,
so they started issuing press releases, they started phoning the journalists. Previously,
they hadn't been very interested in talking to the press,
but at the very moment where the whole thing just
seemed absurd, that's when they started calling the Chicago Tribune
and going, hey, great news, aliens haven't destroyed the world.
And it's the same story as Naeger is relating. Because
(23:18):
of our prayers, because of what we did, we successfully
averted the apocalypse. Aren't we brilliant? That's the theory of
cognitive dissonance. It's incredible. But yeah, all I can say
is Naga's experience is this is not the first time
this has happened.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I think it's one of the most fascinating theories because
it's like the wrestling of the mind. But it's really
helpful to understand when it comes to trust, because so
much of our lives focuses on what we believe, not
why we believe things, and understanding the motivations behind your belief,
(23:53):
why you need to believe something is true, why you
really want to trust that person. It explains misplaced trust
so well. This is also really helpful in terms of
understanding other people that if you focus on what someone believes,
it leads to judgment, right, those silly people who believe
in that cult or in that politician.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
But if you really dig deep and say why does
that person need to believe that, it's usually because of some.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Air of vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
There's usually some hole in their life that this thing
or this person is trying to feel. And then you
come from a place of compassion, not from judgment. They
have to place their trust somewhere. They may not be
placing it in the most trustworthy thing.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I think. Another point that it's worth emphasizing is that
we are all influenced by the people around us, and fundamentally,
a lot of what we believe is based not on
first principles, but on our trust in some authority or another.
So a friend of mine believes that vaccines cause autism.
She's wrong, but you know she believes it. I believe
(25:03):
that carbon dioxide emissions cause climate change, and I'm right. However,
the reason that she believes that vaccines cause autism and
that I believe that carbon dioxide emissions cause climate change
the same basic reason, which is that there are people
who we trust who've told us that, and they've presented
(25:24):
us with evidence that makes sense to us, but that
we're not really qualified to understand. And I believe what
they believe, not because I've read every scientific paper, not
because I understand climate physics, but because that's where I've
placed my trust.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Ready for another question, Yeah, let's go for it. We've
got one from another Andy, and this Andy writes that
he is a massive fan of yours. Rachel is a
man of taste. He is a fraud manager, and he
writes that I often find that victims of fraud are
too trusting of their scammers, with some evidence suggesting that
(26:02):
some victims get scammed multiple times. So the question what
advice would you offer to encourage more trust in good
fraud advice and to have less trust of the nasty
little blighters who commit fraud.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
So really hard one to answer, because I feel like
the foldsters now replicate the trust signals, So like a
bank sending you a text to authorize a payment, they're
using the same mechanisms for you to give your trust
to the wrong personal thing. I fell for one the
(26:40):
other day, and it's like you have a pass l
but someone didn't pay the whatever duty, click on this
link put in your credit card.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
So I did, and that.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Was so stupid, But it's because I was doing something
else and I didn't really think, well, who wouldn't pay
tax and who wouldn't pay the duty? And I think
it's a huge societal problem as to how we have
better signals and marks to.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Know when it's coming from a trustworthy source.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
So in my book How to Make the World That
Up that the Data Detective in the US, I argued
that a lot of the mistakes we make when we're
thinking about statistics that are presented to us on social media,
they're basically the same mistakes we make when we've presented
with any factual claim. We are rushed, we are angry
(27:27):
or otherwise emotional, and that is very often why we
believe things that we shouldn't believe, because we've actually not
got the headspace and the calm to really take a
step back and ponder and think seriously. So the first
piece of advice I give people when they're thinking about
a statistical claim is search your feelings. Yeah, quote my
(27:48):
all time statistical hero, Darth Vader. Searchial feelings, any emotional
reaction is it's all perfectly valid, but it's not necessarily
putting you in the space to logically evaluate what's been
put in front of you. And actually, I think the
same thing is true for that email that comes in
that says, oh, by the way, you've sent three hundred
and ninety nine dollars to somebody via PayPal. If you
(28:10):
didn't send this transaction, just click here and we'll fix it.
Just slow down a moment. Is that email real? So
it's giving yourself that time, it's noticing your emotional reaction.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I think that's really good advice.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Ready for another question. This is absolutely your area of expertise.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I think I think this is something I actually shared.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Well, the meme may or may not have come from you, Rachel,
but in any case, Betsy from California has sent it
to us, and the meme she has sent to us
says this nineteen ninety eight, don't get into a car
with strangers two thousand and five. Don't meet strangers from
the internet twenty eighteen. Use Uber to summon a stranger
(28:52):
from the Internet and get into their car. She says.
Many transactions online and off rely on rating systems as
a proxy for trust. How can we make these systems
more reliable and less vulnerable to scams and fraud. It's
a good question, Betty, is my cover te this question?
I mean, this is how I got into studying trust
(29:14):
was two thousand and six. I first started looking at
how trust works in these platforms. The investors were really
interested in the efficiency to match supply and demand. So
you have something and I want it, and we can
now be matched. But the piece that no one was
studying was the trust signals, the trust mechanisms. This is amazing,
like how are we going to trust strangers? And to
(29:36):
Betsy's point, like things that we described as hitch hiking
and dangerous have now become these massive, multi billion dollar platforms.
Like that's a remarkable thing. Now, the thing that is
as amazing is that the trust systems, or the reputation
systems haven't improved that much. Yes, we have far better insurance,
(29:58):
we have far better identity checks, so checking this person
who they are, who they say they are.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
We have better.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Payment mechanisms, but the repute pation system is still Think
about eBay and the five stars that were given by
Haunted Pirate. We haven't come that far. Now, there are
some that have got a lot better. Ebimi introduced the
double blind system, right, so you wouldn't just give a
good review to get a good review. They introduced context,
(30:28):
so if I'm traveling with my two kids and I'm
looking at a place, that's a completely different context than
say a business traveler. And they just introduced very good
filters and markers and categories that men it became less subjective.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Although from my subjective experience, no really bad experiences, but
several way you get there and you're like, oh, yeah, okay,
I see how this looks so good on the photos,
but it's kind of not that great, and then in
the end you're like, I really want to give a
three star review, or maybe it's just easier to click
(31:04):
five stars and contribute to the problem.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yes, I stayed in one in Australia recently and it
described itself as a remote farm getaway, but it was
literally ten minutes from the equivalent of the twenty five
the traffic right, not really the remote farm cicadas I
had in my head. And they also failed to mention
that it came with a cat. Now, my friend who
(31:27):
was staying with me is very allergic to cats, and
I was like, I can't leave a bad review because
this person is really dependent on the income.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Sounds like they should mention the cat, the cat and
the motorway.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
But that feeling of guilt is wrong because you actually
have a responsibility to the community to protect others.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
But the feeling of guilt is wrong. But it's also real, real,
and that's a problem for these kind of decentralized trust platforms.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
It is, and also who's responsible for when it goes wrong.
We still haven't solved that problem.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Thank you, Rachel. We are going to take a quick
break and we'll be back soon with more questions of trust.
We are back. I am sitting with Rachel Botsman and
we are answering your questions. I should reveal we have
(32:24):
been for a run together.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
We have you are very well dressed. No one has
ever accused me of being well dressed. I've meant he
had lots of clothes on.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
It was a cold day and we weren't running that fast.
But I wanted to ask about fitness trackers because I've
become fascinated by these things, these connected watches that will
measure your heartbeat. They're really just the last few years,
but they're now ubiquitous. My watch really helped me to
run more and to vary my runs and so on.
(32:53):
But I'm aware that there are certain risks that first
of all, I might not be able to trust all
the data I'm getting from the watch. Second, I might
not trust the data the watch is revealing about me,
or third that this training program might not be very
well suited in principle, which knows I'm an old man,
but in practice it doesn't seem to take that into consideration.
(33:13):
So this idea of trusting your body to this thing
on your wrist, that's what I wanted to get your
reflections about.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah, so can I ask do you feel like the
watches in control of you?
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Hmm, No, But I do. I do care about what
the watch thinks.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I do too.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
I do like to sort of get enough activity. I
don't really care about calories as such, but the watch's
estimated calorie consumption is sort of an indicator to me
of how active I've been. I kind of like to
get that to a particular number, and I get a
bit fidgety if I haven't. And there is this absurdity,
of course, if sometimes you forget to wear the watch,
or you forget to switch it on, and actually it
(33:56):
doesn't matter because you're still getting the exercise whether or
not the watch is paying attention. But actually, of course
it does matter.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
So I've run with people where they say, oh, this
one doesn't count. I'm like, what do you mean in
the like because I haven't got my watch, and I'm like, ah,
it's gone a bit fast.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I just talked to a sleep scientist at Oxford who
did an experiment where he got people who were having
trouble sleeping and gave them a sleep tracker. In the morning,
they were asked, well, how are you feeling. Are you
feeling sharp, You're feeling full of energy, and the same
question was asked at twelve and at three, But after
(34:31):
they'd first given their feedback how you feeling, the watch
would tell them, Yeah, you had a terrible night sleep
or you had a brilliant night's sleep. At the end
of the day they went back to the sleep clinic
and he said, okay, I'm sorry, but all of that
was a lie. But what people were told by this
sleep tracker in the morning governed how they felt all day.
Totally have a good night's sleep. Your watch told you
(34:53):
had a bad night's sleep, you will act as though
you had a bad night's sleep. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
It does really tie to trust, because sometimes we really
trust things when we want to be in control. And
so you know, you can see like amazing indicators and
it is very rewarding, like if you're putting the work
in all these things, especially as you get older, you
have to work quite hard at it. But I do
think when it takes the enjoyment out of it, where
you can't run without the watch, I know someone who
(35:19):
runs with three a whoop, a garment, and an apple, okay,
And that is obsession and that is like clinging onto
something so tightly. And anyone that's done sport knows that.
The magic thing about sport is it's a journey into
the unknown. It's the ultimate trust in yourself. That's why
I love long distance running, is that you don't know
(35:41):
what's going to happen when you get over sixteen seventeen
eighteen kilometers, Like it's so interesting where your mind goes
and the.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Watch I do, what's going to happen? Stop, you're going
to stup? Yeah? I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I usually need the toilet around them, but that's probably
too much information. But the point is, like a lot
of trust is it's a confident relationship with the unknown. Right,
So my watch can tell me exactly today what my
marathon time is. And it could be boiling hot, it
could be freezing cold, my niker bloke, it could trip
on a cut what. So many things can happen, Like,
I'm gonna be disappointed if I hold onto that time.
(36:20):
Too much trust in fitness trackers, bad bad thing. I'm
wearing three. Do you know some of the insurance plans
like if you measure all these steps that they'll give
you discounts and things. But I've seen people in airports
tapping their feet if you're not seeing that, they take
the watch off, they put it round their ankle to
keep up their step count.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I've seen it on the train people do that.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Like that's that's too much, right. I have one last
question for you, Tim. I love this question. It caught
my eye. It's from Cayenne in New York State. So, Tim,
why do people trust podcasters so much? Even on topics
they aren't knowledgeable about?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Ah, I feel seen. I mean, there's a good question,
but I think that people trust cautionary tails and they
trust other podcasters because trust is often placed not on
the basis of a rational assessment of expertise on other intuitions.
(37:22):
So do I like this person? Do I know this person?
People have me in their ears every week they get
used to my voice. I feel like someone they really know,
and somebody you really know is somebody you can trust, right,
So that's part of it. Or maybe I sound fluent,
I have a nice accent. I don't stumble over my words.
(37:43):
Of course, I don't stumble over my words, because I've
got a producer cutting all the uns and the ears
out or retaking if I stumble. But because I sound fluent,
well that also sounds trustworthy. And these are just proxies
for actually being deserving of trust. But I think they're
proxies that that work. You're the expert on trust, Does
that make sense to you?
Speaker 3 (38:04):
So if you think about the way trust used to
work was who that person, and war was what they
were saying, and then lastly, how they made that person feel,
and that has completely been inverted. So Number one is
we make most trust decisions, particularly through social media or
audio content, based on feeling how that person makes you feel,
(38:29):
and then who they are and then what they say.
And that's why people that make us feel comfortable. You know,
there's some podcasts and it does literally feel like Kirsy
Young does this, like if I'm stressed, just turn But
there's others that are funny, and there's others that are salacious.
But it's such an important point because people with feeling
(38:50):
that understand that mechanism how I make you feel is
whether you're going to engage with me, they are the
ones rising to the top more so than ever before.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
So there we go. Thank you so much for sending
in your questions, and thank you so much to Rachel
Batsman for answering them. Rachel, this has been a lot
of fun.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
It has. Yes, we've gone all over the place.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
So Rachel's audiobook is How to Trust and Be Trusted.
It's available via pushkin. Rachel, you also have a newsletter
remind us of the name and where people can sign
up for it.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
It's called Rethink and it's on substack and I love
writing it, I genuinely do.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
We will be back again next week with another classic
episode of cautionary Tales. In the meantime, if you have
a question for us for our next episode of cautionary questions,
please send it in the email addresses tales at Pushkin
dot fm. That is t a l e s at
Pushkin dot fm. Send in those questions because we do
(39:48):
love hearing from you. Thank you for listening. For a
full list of our sources, see the show notes at
Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales has written by me Tim Harford,
with Andrew Wright, Plis Fine and Ryan Dilly. It's produced
(40:11):
by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and
original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound
design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Bend
A Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice
talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah jupp
(40:32):
Messeam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and rufus Wright. The show also
wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Pautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardore Studios in London
(40:54):
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fam slash
plus
Host
Tim Harford
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