Who do you trust? Most of us trust our family and friends. We have news sources we trust. Trust is actually our basic default condition. We tend to trust most people and information we encounter. This is both the power and peril of trust.

Trust is our basic response to people and the things they tell us (Grice, 1975; Schwarz & Jalbert, 2020). If someone tells us something, we tend to believe they are doing their best to tell us the truth. If we walk into a store, we trust the prices listed are what we’ll pay. We trust that the item inside the box is what’s listed on the outside of the box.

Even the most skeptical among us don’t question everything we encounter. I’m a scientist. I’m trained to be skeptical. But while I’m skeptical about the ideas in my field, I generally trust that other scientists are basically honest and doing their best. There may be errors, but the likelihood of a lie remains low.

Trusting the world, other people, and information is powerful. You don’t have to double-check everything, all the time. If I had to double-check everything constantly, I wouldn’t be able to get much done. Trust allows social groups and the economy to function.

Of course, we all know that some people lie sometimes. And there are some people we expect to mislead us. People don’t tend to trust used car salespeople. We also aren’t confident in the prices listed in car lots—that there may be add-ons. I know my students don’t always provide the true explanation for why their work is late. But generally, they do.

If someone routinely lies........

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