Trust

Overview

Trust refers to a psychological state in which you hold positive expectations about another person's intentions and actions and accept putting yourself in a vulnerable position. The developmental psychologist Erik Erikson placed acquiring "basic trust" in infancy as the starting point of personality development. Trust can't be built overnight. It forms through an accumulation of small promises kept. On the other hand, it has an asymmetry: a single betrayal can make it collapse.

How trust works in a question box

There are 2 kinds of trust in a question box: the sender's trust in the person answering, and the trust of the person answering in the sender.

The sender sends a question trusting that "this person will answer seriously" and "I won't be exposed or made fun of." The person answering answers trusting that "this probably isn't a hostile question" and "they're asking in good faith." If either side's trust breaks down, the question box has a harder time working.

Anonymity can both lower and raise the bar for trust. You can ask casually because nobody knows who you are, but precisely because it's anonymous, the worry "Can I really trust this?" also comes up.

What answers that build trust have in common

Here are 3 things that people answering who are trusted tend to have in common: being consistent, being honest, and respecting the other person.

Being consistent means not changing your attitude depending on your mood. If you were polite yesterday and sloppy today, trust won't grow. Being honest means being able to say you don't know when you don't know. Saying "I don't know" honestly builds more trust than forcing an answer. Respecting the other person means treating every question with respect. Don't make fun of silly questions. Doing this again and again lays the foundation of trust in a question box.