Key points

Trusting others is our default tendency and means we don’t have to double-check everything.

When we trust others and the informtion we encounter, we can be susceptible to lies and fraud.

When we lose trust, we may become more susceptible to unreliable sources and conspiracy theories.

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.

The Power 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 th

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