Do you naturally trust people?

Well it is true that if we trust on some one then only he/she will trust on us. So we have to trust first.

Upon entering boot camp, the military described a policy of giving everyone a clean slate, then giving demerits as warranted.

This stuck with me; I’m inclined to trust people until they give me cause not to.

No it takes time for me to trust… I still blab my life story to anyone who I feel comfortable with

The same like you.

My natural inclination is to be trusting, until I’m given reasons to thin otherwise. However, I do deliberately temper this instinct as I’m aware people are rarely what they seem.

I trust until people are proved untrustworthy.
If there isn’t any trust then you will quite easily find reasons not to trust.

I used to trust nearly everyone. Now I know better that many people care only about what’s in it for them so I now always keep an eye open for that attached string. If someone wants to screw with me so be it I will survive the opportunity won’t.

You are right. Trust should be earned. Trust no one but yourself

I start out with someone new with a wary kind of trust. Sort of a baseline and you earn or lose trust from me as we go along. I will give most people the benefit of the doubt, unless they screw me. Real deep trust must be earned, and if you lose mine, it is very hard for me to give it again.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

@jeremycw1 what if you don’t trust yourself?... how is that earned?

I usually trust people until I have reason not too.

Ditto, you have to earn trust, just like respect.

Yes. I consider necessary distrust to be the exception.

No I don’t trust anyone!! I’ve attracted too many undesirables in the past to be to too trusting now, when anyone new pops up I tend to be very diligent in reading their actions as to how they carry themselves & put themselves across, if I feel they are too up themselves it won’t go any further, I prefer down to earth friends as apposed to show men or shallow attention seekers who know it all…….. :-/

I find it very difficult to trust people but that doesn’t mean I treat people badly until I feel I can trust them. I am just very guarded with people until I feel comfortable trusting them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Yes, until they prove me wrong.

As well as being earned trust has to be learned.If you meet as you say someone new, then you learn about them as you go this would include whether they were a trustworthy person or not.

I have a limited trust for people. Basically I believe them if what they say makes sense and seems reasonable, otherwise I don’t, but I don’t ever make the assumption that even the most reasonable things a random person or acquaintance tells me are enough to base an important decision or my world view on. Or you could say that I don’t trust them, but they would never realize it. I’ve known a lot of liars and been victimized by people I trusted, so I’m relatively guarded and don’t hand out information that could lead to my being victimized in any way.

People need to trust other people. They need their family, their tribe. But, trust isn’t just earned in some kind of payment. It’s more of a compatibility thing. I guess you know that, I just don’t like the phrase “earn my trust.” As for trusting people you just met? You don’t know who or what they are, you can’t trust something you don’t know. Unless, sometimes, when you have no one you can trust and desperately need someone; you’ll give it to the first person who will have it and make yourself believe you know them.

I don’t usuallt trust people when I just meet them…I’ve known some of my friends for more almost a year now, but I don’t trust all of them ;)

I trust people until they give me a reason not to.
Unless I’m in a relationship with them. Then, apparently, I’m a complete trusting fool who won’t see what is right in front of my face because I don’t want to.
But in general, with everyone else who is at arms length, the view is more clear.
Hey! That was a revelation!

I trust my instincts. I tend to trust people, until they give me a reason not to trust them…and that sucks when it happens. However, if I get that feeling from the start and I can’t quite put my finger on it, I tend to be more reserved and enter that “watch and wait” mode.

What is trust? The way most people seem to use it, it’s about whether you believe someone is telling you the truth. So either you assume someone is telling the truth until proven otherwise, or you make no assumptions and see if the person’s behavior over time indicates they are telling the truth.

For me, trust is not about honesty. It is about predictability. If someone lies under certain conditions and they do it predictably, then I can trust them because I know what they are likely to do. I trust people to the extent that I think I understand them and I can predict with fair accuracy how they will behave.

I can trust people who lie, so long as they lie in a fairly predictable way. For example, my friends G and M always say they will be on time, whatever the time we agree to meet it. They are always between fifteen minutes and half an hour late. So we tell them the time is half an hour before it really is, and we’re cool.

I do not “naturally” trust people, except to the extent that I think I know them upon meeting them. What trust is really about for me, is whether I trust myself. Do I trust myself to accurately understand people? To the extent that I believe my assessments are accurate, then I trust others.

Usually trust must be built. It starts with small steps—disclosures of information. These disclosures slowly get more and more important, as trust is built and you come to believe the other person will hold your confidences and not judge you, and be there when they say they will be. Or, the don’t hold your confidences and they do judge you and they aren’t there when they say they will be. Either way, I trust them to behave in a predictable pattern. I know what they’ll do, no matter what they say.

I’ve found the people that I choose to be friends with on fluther to be very trustworthy. That’s probably because I stay away from the ones I feel could be dangerous in some way or another. Some people I believe I understand instantly. I feel like I know them before I ever met them. I’m sure I’m picking up on something—some way of speaking, or a way of telling stories, or what, specifically, they talk about. Usually, though, it takes a while.

And then there are people who I know, before we have ever met, that we could be very close, simply by how they respond to what I write. I’m sure I don’t catch all of those respondents, but when I do, so far, I have been right. In a way, that’s a scary thing. It has lead me in strange directions, but they are all people who end up teaching me more than I ever could have imagined. I am truly blessed with friends like that.

I used to. I’m a New Yorker now.

I do.

No,I sure don’t ;)

I naturally distrust people.

I naturally trust, not to say I have not experienced unworthiness of trust but, to become jaded and suspicious of everyones intent is not healthy.

You trust until someone gves you a reason not to trust.

I naturally distrust people. It seems to make life a bit easier for me.

I usually get a feel for someone and use my instinct with trust…it’s in all the subtleties that I don’t think we are cognitively aware of a lot of the time

Yes, that reminding me that I should not.

I think you are right. Not that you asked me. However, I say this with respect. I have been the guiles idiot that trusts people by nature. I think it boiled down to some crazy notion that I believe all people are like me, trustworthy. They are not. It is a hard lesson to learn.
I am working on it!

However I think it would be harmful to treat stranger with suspicious hostility or coldness simply because you do not trust them. Also to close your heart so tight, that no one can get in.

Trust isn’t a binary switch. There are levels of trust, degrees of trust, qualities of trust. Any interaction carries some kind of minimal trust. For example, I trust most human beings I interact with not to stab me in the face. I don’t trust them with a romantic or sexual relationship. That’s a different kind of trust, and more difficult to establish.

Well siad @elenuial .
There are also those of whom I would not get within spittin’ distance.
Trust once broken is so hard to regain

I trust until I am given reason not to.

I lurve @elenuial‘s answer.

Most of the time, it isn’t about whether I trust a person, it’s about the accuity of my character judgement. The better I am at that, the more I understand the person I am considering. Here’s an example….

I’m in a hiring process right now, so I placed a local ad. A man calls me to inquire, but I am less than impressed. My husband asks me what I thought of the first caller who responded, and, though I couldn’t prove it, I said, “I didn’t like him. I think the interview is going to be a waste of time. He seems sloppy and doesn’t seem to be very responsible.” Pretty vague, right? 15 minutes later, the man calls and cancels the interview, citing that he doesn’t have a babysitter for his son.

When not in an employer position, I generally trust everybody unless they give me a reason not to. I DID weigh this carefully over the years, revisiting this decision from time to time. In the end, what tipped the scales are the good things that I miss out on by being mistrustful. Everybody has something to bring to the table, and everybody has baggage. I have to take the good with the not-so-good. We don’t have to be bosom buddies to enjoy each other.

My insticts usually tell me when to trust someone. They’ve rarely failed, although it has taken time to learn why not to trust someone.

@talljasperman I believe you have to learn how trust yourself… you gain your own trust by knowing your limits and your personality… i don’t know where i’m goin with this, but I believe that it’s sort of possible to gain trust in yourself if you know what i’m saying.

I feel that people have to earn my trust. I am not just handing it out. When you trust everyone then you get screwed over by the bad eggs

I used to trust people but i’ve gotten burned big time. People take advantage of the kind.

No, I do not trust people. I guard myself.

@phillis I completely relate to what you said about that initial gut feeling to people your encounter. I have been reading this book called “Blink” which confirms your experience with this applicant.

The author describes the main subject of his book as “thin-slicing”: our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, this is an idea that spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. Gladwell draws on examples from science, advertising, sales, medicine, and popular music to reinforce his ideas. Gladwell also uses many examples of regular people’s experiences with “thin-slicing.”

Gladwell explains how an expert’s ability to “thin slice” can be corrupted by their likes and dislikes, prejudices and stereotypes (even unconscious ones), and how they can be overloaded by too much information. Two particular forms of unconscious bias Gladwell discusses are Implicit Association Tests and psychological priming. Gladwell also tells us about our instinctive ability to mind read, which is how we can get to know what emotions a person is feeling just by looking at his or her face.

The book argues that intuitive judgment is developed by experience, training, and knowledge. For example, Gladwell claims that prejudice can operate at an intuitive unconscious level, even in individuals whose conscious attitudes are not prejudiced.

@Cruiser Damn, Ididn’t know there was a book on this stuff! I have spent many an hour, trying to figure out how I know this stuff. I’ve seen people who are better at it than I am, and that’s really saying something. I have a couple of questions.

1— Should I take your reference to mind reading literally? Growing up severely abused, I developed a very stong sense when something is not right about a person, when they are misrepresenting themselves even slightly (often, I even know what it is they are misrepresenting), and also a significant sensitivity to the resonance of truth.

2— Would you please provide an example of unconscious bias/stereotyping? I want to be sure I understand what you’re saying.

I, too, have noticed this in the same categories as your Gladwell author mentioned. I am still amazed that someone wrote a book on something, when I never even had the opportunity to dissect it with someone. Not many people are interested in this topic. Maybe they don’t realize it exists. Incredibly interesting! Thank you for sharing.

@phillis He details research by a scientist who developed what he refers to as thin slicing. This is a detailed analysis of how people behave, interact and develop feelings and reactions to these interactions on a subconscious level which often contradicts the conscious perception of that interaction. He does this by video taping 2 people having a discussion and then “thin slicing” that discussion into frame by frame analysis of each frame using a numbered grading system of the voice characteristics, tone, inflection etc., body position, facial expressions etc. and other non-verbal cues.

The scary part is he then can predict with stunning accuracy the “divorce” rate of couples analyzed somewhere in the 90% accuracy range and how soon it will happen. It was just mind blowing to read the couples reactions to their conversations and then get a play by play review of what these couples were really saying and doing with all these micro movements and reactions. This is where I would suspect your subconscious “trust” instinct would be able to be “read” when dealing with strangers or even trusted loved ones. Both scary and fascinating.

Check it out here…
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/

@Cruiser I’ve often thought about getting that book (it was one of those that jumped off the shelf at me but I didn’t listen to my instincts…it keeps coming back to me though like this for instance…) and I’m definitely going to get it now!

@lynneblundell Do it as I think anyone will be fascinated by his thoughts on this subject matter.

@Cruiser it’s ordered and on it’s way!!

Very much so. It’s not uncommon for me to offer the same level of trust to a person i’ve just met as I would a close friend. Outside of work environments (I have lost trust in peoples abilities to perform certain work tasks; though this is easily forgivable it assists to consider such things when delegating in the future) I have yet to perceive any action or omission to be significant enough for me to lessen my trust in a person. Though it should be noted that my perception of what is significant shall obviously be substantially different from that of others. Basically, I naturally trust everyone because there is exceedingly little that a person can do to misuse my trust.

@bencruiserdrewim It arrived yesterday….:-), now I just need to clear some time in my schedule to get through all these books!

@benlynneblundellim I have been reading it and trying to finish the last few chapters! Enjoy!