Trust is broken. Here’s how we rebuild it

One of the first things I noticed when I went to live in former Eastern Bloc countries was how often conspiracy theories came up in everyday conversation. The institutions of society had lost trust long ago, so the official version of anything was always in doubt. People formed their own narratives to explain nearly everything. Today we’re seeing something similar in America. An annual Gallup survey finds very little trust across almost every institutional class, including businesses. For example, when asked which institutions they trust “a great deal” or “quite a lot,” only 15% said they trust large corporations, 11% trust television news, and just 10% trust Congress. This is more than a perception problem. It’s a breakdown in how society functions. Trust is what makes collective action possible. Without it, people don’t just disagree on solutions, they stop agreeing on what’s real. That’s what we’re seeing now. If we want to lead effectively, whether in society or inside organizations, we need to rethink how trust is actually created. The origins of identity and trust Traditionally, the prevailing theory among intellectuals was that religion originated in superstition. People needed some way to content with seemingly random forces they couldn’t control, like rain and drought. Religion gave primitive societies a way of understanding the world, or so the thinking went. But evolutionary psychologists pointed out a fatal flaw in that idea. Religion is expensive. As anybody who has toured churches in Europe can attest, it takes up a tremendous amount of resources and human effort. If religion were merely superstition, nonreligious societies should have been able to outcompete religious ones. And we know from that did not happen. Today the prevailing evolutionary theory of religion is that it enabled collective action. In a sense, the adornments, chanting, singing, and clapping are the point. If people can come together to perform elaborate rituals, they can also coordi