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Happiness, 5.04 (V) Week 5 Video 4 - Perceived vs Actual Trust

[MUSIC] What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear of course. » [LAUGH] » Hi there! Good to see you again. In the previous video, I discussed some hidden benefits of proactive trust, including that by being proactively trusting, we increase the chances of surrounding ourselves with trustworthy people. And that we also get to contribute to societal upliftment. However, as I also discussed, although proactively trusting others has these benefits, most of us find it difficult to trust others proactively because, we are hardwired to be distrusting. So what are we to do? Should we just ignore our hardwired tendency to distrust and trust others proactively? Or should we obey our cynical instincts, because after all there is an evolutionarily sound reason why we are instinctively distrusting. To resolve this dilemma, one thing that would be really useful to know is, how trustworthy people actually are, compared to how trustworthy we think they are. Say, if for example, people are actually more trustworthy than you think they are. In the Beer Vendor example imagine that 80% of beer vendors in Goa would return with the change. But you think only 20% would. Then, it would of course make sense to ease up a little bit on your instinctive distrust and trust beer vendors a little bit more. So, back to the question. How trustworthy are people in real life? In a previous video, I shared some findings with you that showed that people are actually very trustworthy. As you may remember, 95% of participants in the Swiss study behaved in a trustworthy fashion when they were trusted. But those results were obtained in a controlled lab settings. Perhaps the participants in that experiment felt pressured to behave in a trustworthy fashion because they believed that the experimenters were watching their actions. It's also possible that the kinds of people that participate in these kinds of experiments are generally more trustworthy. So you may ask, and it will be a legitimate question to ask, whether people would behave in an equally trustworthy fashion in the real world. Let me take a concrete example to think through this issue. Imagine that you misplaced your wallet on the streets of your home town. What would your prediction be about whether the wallet would be returned to you? Let's make this a little more elaborate. Imagine that you and I and 18 other students taking this course get together in your home town to do an experiment. Imagine that we each put a relatively large sum of money, say $200, into our wallets. And for the sake of science, we leave our wallets laying around in various parts of the city. Say you leave it in a park. I leave it in a bus stop. Someone else leaves it in a public library. And so on. Imagine that apart from leaving $200 in our wallet, we also leave our addresses in it. So that if someone were to find our wallet and wish to return it, they could. What proportion of wallets, out of these 20, what number do you think, would be returned? Answer the question by picking a number from 1 to 20 on your screen. Thank you. Now here's some interesting news for you. It turns out that the experiment that I just described to you has been done. Not in your city, unless you happen to live in Toronto, but the exact same experiment was conducted by the Canadian newspaper, The Toronto Star in the largest city in Canada a few years back,. To tell you how the experiment was done. I'm going to invite one of the most eminent scholars and trust. Professor John Helliwell, from the University of British Columbia. Here he is, listen. He's first going to describe what the experimenters were trying to find, and then he's gonna tell us what they found. » The Toronto Star newspaper, dropped 20 wallets, in Toronto. And, of course, the owner was fictitious, but there was identification and money in the wallet. And the wallets would either be returned or not returned. And it'd be by a stranger because the person who, was supposed to own them, we know they didn't know the person cuz they weren't a real person. » [LAUGH] » So now, for the first time ever in the world, we were able to compare, the actual levels of trustworthiness, in a community with people's perceptions of the trustworthiness, of their neighbors. And that's really important, of course, because suppose the public policy issue is, how do you create trust? Now, the trust that's important, as we've discussed, is the trust that you have. Not what actually would happen. But what you think would happen. That's what makes you happy. But of course, you can't be living in a make-believe world. You can't fool yourself into thinking people are trustworthy and they're not. But what if the alternative is true? And this was the first time this experiment could ever be run. What if the alternative is true? That what we read in the papers, gives us, or see on television is such a distorted view of reality, that we do not accept that the people among whom we live in our community are as good as they are. And that is making ourselves unhappy for no reason. » That's right. » It's really much better than we think they are. And all we need to do is know that. » Right. » And we don't have to improve anybody's behavior. It's just getting the message. So that's why this is scientifically very important, of course. I've rather telegraph to you already what the result is.. Its in that trust and well being paper that your students have had access to. That the actual number of wallets returned out of 20 was 16. The expected proportion was 23%. 2.3 out of 10. And the likely, the possibility that the real world, and the perceived world, with respect to trustworthiness, with the same world is about one in several billion. » mm » So what that's saying is that people have a very mistaken view. And this is after all in a country where trust is known to be high, people have high trust levels. But none the less, they don't begin to realize how trustworthy their neighbors are, so they're, not deliberately, but unintentionally making themselves much less happy than they should be. » As professor John Helliwell notes, Canada where this experiment was done, is a very trustworthy place. So you may think, yeah, well, 80% of the wallets got returned in Canada but that's definitely not going to happen where I live. Perhaps. But what I want to bring your attention to is that it's not just the proportion of wallets that got returned, but also the people's predictions of how many wallets would be returned. People on average, predicted, that only 23% of the wallets would be returned. So the difference between how trustworthy people actually are, and how trustworthy they were expected to be, Is a whopping 57%. And if perceived trustworthiness can be so much lower than actual trustworthiness in a country in which people are known to be trustworthy, I think that it's highly likely that the same pattern will hold true in other countries as well. So, for example, if the same experiment were done in Mumbai, India. Perhaps only 50% of the wallets would get returned. Maybe only 40%. But then, it's highly likely that the citizens of these countries would expect a correspondingly lower number of wallets to be returned. So for example, maybe only 5% of the wallets may be expected to be returned in Mumbai. Which would mean that the difference between the actual and the expected trust would be 40 or 50%. Likewise, the difference between actual and expected trust may be 35% in Athens, with people expecting only 5% of the wallets to be returned, when in fact, 40% are. And so on. The point I'm trying to make, is that people on average seem to be far more cynical and distrusting of others than they ought to be. I say ought to be purely from the standpoint of maximizing happiness, and not from some other model or angle. Clearly, we don't wanna be delusional, and we don't wanna trust others when we shouldn't. That would be stupid. We would get hurt. But by the same token, we don't wanna distrust others more than we should either. That would be stupid too. Because, it would lower our happiness levels. This means that the smart thing to do Is to trust others more than the average person does. Which means that if your trust in others is at the average level, which is what it's likely to be, particularly if you have never thought about this issue in depth, then you should try experimenting with trusting people more. This brings me to the fifth habit of the highly happy. Which is exercising smart trust. Which is to trust others in a way that maximizes the chances that our trust is reciprocated with trustworthiness. And therefore minimizes the chances that we get hurt. In the coming videos, I will walk you through a self-assessment of your current levels of trust first. And then, I will discuss some strategies for exercising smart trust. See you soon. [MUSIC]


[MUSIC] What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear of course. » [LAUGH] » Hi there! Good to see you again. In the previous video, I discussed some hidden benefits of proactive trust, including that by being proactively trusting, we increase the chances of surrounding ourselves with trustworthy people. And that we also get to contribute to societal upliftment. However, as I also discussed, although proactively trusting others has these benefits, most of us find it difficult to trust others proactively because, we are hardwired to be distrusting. So what are we to do? Should we just ignore our hardwired tendency to distrust and trust others proactively? Or should we obey our cynical instincts, because after all there is an evolutionarily sound reason why we are instinctively distrusting. To resolve this dilemma, one thing that would be really useful to know is, how trustworthy people actually are, compared to how trustworthy we think they are. Say, if for example, people are actually more trustworthy than you think they are. In the Beer Vendor example imagine that 80% of beer vendors in Goa would return with the change. But you think only 20% would. Then, it would of course make sense to ease up a little bit on your instinctive distrust and trust beer vendors a little bit more. So, back to the question. How trustworthy are people in real life? In a previous video, I shared some findings with you that showed that people are actually very trustworthy. As you may remember, 95% of participants in the Swiss study behaved in a trustworthy fashion when they were trusted. But those results were obtained in a controlled lab settings. Perhaps the participants in that experiment felt pressured to behave in a trustworthy fashion because they believed that the experimenters were watching their actions. It's also possible that the kinds of people that participate in these kinds of experiments are generally more trustworthy. So you may ask, and it will be a legitimate question to ask, whether people would behave in an equally trustworthy fashion in the real world. Let me take a concrete example to think through this issue. Imagine that you misplaced your wallet on the streets of your home town. What would your prediction be about whether the wallet would be returned to you? Let's make this a little more elaborate. Imagine that you and I and 18 other students taking this course get together in your home town to do an experiment. Imagine that we each put a relatively large sum of money, say $200, into our wallets. And for the sake of science, we leave our wallets laying around in various parts of the city. Say you leave it in a park. I leave it in a bus stop. Someone else leaves it in a public library. And so on. Imagine that apart from leaving $200 in our wallet, we also leave our addresses in it. So that if someone were to find our wallet and wish to return it, they could. What proportion of wallets, out of these 20, what number do you think, would be returned? Answer the question by picking a number from 1 to 20 on your screen. Thank you. Now here's some interesting news for you. It turns out that the experiment that I just described to you has been done. Not in your city, unless you happen to live in Toronto, but the exact same experiment was conducted by the Canadian newspaper, The Toronto Star in the largest city in Canada a few years back,. To tell you how the experiment was done. I'm going to invite one of the most eminent scholars and trust. Professor John Helliwell, from the University of British Columbia. Here he is, listen. He's first going to describe what the experimenters were trying to find, and then he's gonna tell us what they found. » The Toronto Star newspaper, dropped 20 wallets, in Toronto. And, of course, the owner was fictitious, but there was identification and money in the wallet. And the wallets would either be returned or not returned. And it'd be by a stranger because the person who, was supposed to own them, we know they didn't know the person cuz they weren't a real person. » [LAUGH] » So now, for the first time ever in the world, we were able to compare, the actual levels of trustworthiness, in a community with people's perceptions of the trustworthiness, of their neighbors. And that's really important, of course, because suppose the public policy issue is, how do you create trust? Now, the trust that's important, as we've discussed, is the trust that you have. Not what actually would happen. But what you think would happen. That's what makes you happy. But of course, you can't be living in a make-believe world. You can't fool yourself into thinking people are trustworthy and they're not. But what if the alternative is true? And this was the first time this experiment could ever be run. What if the alternative is true? That what we read in the papers, gives us, or see on television is such a distorted view of reality, that we do not accept that the people among whom we live in our community are as good as they are. And that is making ourselves unhappy for no reason. » That's right. » It's really much better than we think they are. And all we need to do is know that. » Right. » And we don't have to improve anybody's behavior. It's just getting the message. So that's why this is scientifically very important, of course. I've rather telegraph to you already what the result is.. Its in that trust and well being paper that your students have had access to. That the actual number of wallets returned out of 20 was 16. The expected proportion was 23%. 2.3 out of 10. And the likely, the possibility that the real world, and the perceived world, with respect to trustworthiness, with the same world is about one in several billion. » mm » So what that's saying is that people have a very mistaken view. And this is after all in a country where trust is known to be high, people have high trust levels. But none the less, they don't begin to realize how trustworthy their neighbors are, so they're, not deliberately, but unintentionally making themselves much less happy than they should be. » As professor John Helliwell notes, Canada where this experiment was done, is a very trustworthy place. So you may think, yeah, well, 80% of the wallets got returned in Canada but that's definitely not going to happen where I live. Perhaps. But what I want to bring your attention to is that it's not just the proportion of wallets that got returned, but also the people's predictions of how many wallets would be returned. People on average, predicted, that only 23% of the wallets would be returned. So the difference between how trustworthy people actually are, and how trustworthy they were expected to be, Is a whopping 57%. And if perceived trustworthiness can be so much lower than actual trustworthiness in a country in which people are known to be trustworthy, I think that it's highly likely that the same pattern will hold true in other countries as well. So, for example, if the same experiment were done in Mumbai, India. Perhaps only 50% of the wallets would get returned. Maybe only 40%. But then, it's highly likely that the citizens of these countries would expect a correspondingly lower number of wallets to be returned. So for example, maybe only 5% of the wallets may be expected to be returned in Mumbai. Which would mean that the difference between the actual and the expected trust would be 40 or 50%. Likewise, the difference between actual and expected trust may be 35% in Athens, with people expecting only 5% of the wallets to be returned, when in fact, 40% are. And so on. The point I'm trying to make, is that people on average seem to be far more cynical and distrusting of others than they ought to be. I say ought to be purely from the standpoint of maximizing happiness, and not from some other model or angle. Clearly, we don't wanna be delusional, and we don't wanna trust others when we shouldn't. That would be stupid. We would get hurt. But by the same token, we don't wanna distrust others more than we should either. That would be stupid too. Because, it would lower our happiness levels. This means that the smart thing to do Is to trust others more than the average person does. Which means that if your trust in others is at the average level, which is what it's likely to be, particularly if you have never thought about this issue in depth, then you should try experimenting with trusting people more. This brings me to the fifth habit of the highly happy. Which is exercising smart trust. Which is to trust others in a way that maximizes the chances that our trust is reciprocated with trustworthiness. And therefore minimizes the chances that we get hurt. In the coming videos, I will walk you through a self-assessment of your current levels of trust first. And then, I will discuss some strategies for exercising smart trust. See you soon. [MUSIC]