People reestablish trust only when they believe in change

Trust is crucial in any close relationship.  When you make plans with a friend, you have to trust that he will show up at the appointed place at the appointed time.  When you make a business deal with someone, you have to trust that she will follow through with her end of the bargain.  Not everyone lives up to their end of every bargain, though.  What factors determine whether you will trust someone again?

This question was explored by Michael Haselhugn, Maurice Schweitzer, and Alison Wood in a paper published in the May, 2010 issue of Psychological Science.  These authors examined how people’s beliefs about trustworthiness affect whether they will trust someone again.

Some people hold the belief that being trustworthy is a trait.  (The authors called this belief an entity belief.)  When you believe that it is a trait, then you think that it is someone that people have or they do not.  If you have this trait belief, then when someone violates your trust, you will assume that they are not trustworthy in general, and will have a hard time trusting them again.

Other people hold the belief that people can become trustworthy depending on their desire and their circumstance.  (The authors call this belief an incremental belief.)  When you believe that circumstances affect trust, then you may find it easier to trust someone again even if they have violated your trust in the past. 

To examine this possibility, the authors had people read one of two essays.  One essay was designed to lead people to believe that behaviors reflect deep unchangeable traits.  The other essay was designed to reinforce the idea that behaviors are changeable. 

Then, people played a game involving trust with a partner.  They were told that the partner was another experiment participant in the next room, though actually the partner was a computer program.  In this game, people were given $6 and were asked whether they would give that $6 to their partner.  If they gave the money to their partner, then the money was tripled, so that the partner had $18.  The partner then had the option to give half the money back to the participant (so that each would end up with $9) or to keep all of the money.  In every round, the participant was told what their partner had selected that they would have done with the money if it was given to them.

People played 3 rounds of the game at first.  In those rounds, the partner never elected to return the money.  So, the partner was untrustworthy. 

After the third round, the participant got a ‘message’ from the participant apologizing for being untrustworthy and promising to be fairer in the rest of the game.  In the next three rounds, the partner always returned half the money.  Finally, participants were informed that they would play one last round of the game.  This last round was the one that was the main measurement in this study. 

Participants who read the paragraph suggesting that trustworthiness is a trait were much less likely to give money to their partner in the last round than participants who read that trustworthiness can be influenced by circumstance. 

This study highlights two important aspects of trust.  First, your beliefs about whether being trustworthy is a trait can be influenced by factors like an essay talking about behavior.  Second, that belief about traits affects whether you will trust someone who has violated your trust in the past.  

Ultimately, it is important to remember that circumstances often affect people’s behavior.  So you ought to take those circumstances into account when deciding whether to trust someone. 

The best New Year's resolutions are positive resolutions

As we approach a new year, it is common for us to take stock of our lives and think about things that we’d like to do differently in the coming year.  Often, the resolutions we think about are negative resolutions.  That is, we have some behavior that we currently perform that we’d like to stop.  It might be quitting smoking, or eating less junk food, stopping drinking or drugs, or even cutting back on bad language.

Unfortunately, if we are thinking about these kinds of resolutions, it is probably not for the first time.  Mark Twain is supposed to have said that quitting smoking is one of the easiest things he ever did, he has done it thousands of times. 

There are many reasons why stopping these behaviors are difficult, and I have written about some of these difficulties in past entries.  Here, I want to focus on the form of the resolution itself.

I called these resolutions “negative resolutions” because they focus on a behavior to be stopped.  Often, this behavior is already a habit, and so it is strongly driven by the environment.  That is, parts of your environment already suggest the behavior to you.  Just drinking a cup of coffee may promote the desire to smoke.  Walking through the kitchen may increase the urge to eat.

In order to try to stop a behavior, you have to think about that behavior consciously.  That is, if you want to cut down on your eating, you must exert effort to think about what you are doing.  To watch yourself to make sure that you don’t eat too much.

Research by Peter Herman, Janet Polivy and their colleagues suggests that people who are actively trying to diet become “restrained eaters.”  Restrained eaters are people who are thinking about their diet and about restricting the amount of food they eat.  The problem with being a restrained eater is that it creates a paradox.  You want to stop eating, so you have to think about your eating behavior.  The more you think about eating, the more that concepts related to food and eating stay active.  As I have discussed in previous posts, when a concept is active, it is easier for people to perform actions relating to that concept. 

So, focusing on reducing your eating can actually make it harder for you to eat less.  The same is true for any negative resolution.  Thinking about not smoking or drinking or cursing will activate related concepts, which will make it easier to smoke, drink, or curse. 

In the end, the problem lies with the resolution itself.  You cannot replace something with nothing.  The habit system will still have connections between the environment and your behavior, and so it will continue to suggest the behavior you are trying to stop.  As a result, you will have to continue thinking about stopping the behavior. 

So, rather than making negative resolutions, make positive ones.  Do not resolve to stop smoking, resolve to start exercising.  If you really start an exercise program, your smoking will get in the way, and you will have a reason to stop.  Do not resolve to eat less, resolve to eat differently.  Cut red meat out of your diet, and start eating other foods.  With the number of really good meat substitutes on the market now, it is easy to replace high-fat foods with low-fat foods without sacrificing taste.

If you focus your energies on positive resolutions, then you will not suffer the paradox of negative resolutions.  If you start exercising, you will not be consciously thinking about smoking.  You will have removed one source of failure in your resolutions.

So in the coming year, think positive!