What would it really take to 'rebuild trust'? Baroness Onora O'Neill at TEDxHousesofParliament

Baroness O'Neill, one of the UK's leading philosophers, explores how poorly we attribute or understand trust and the steps we can take to fix this.

So I'm going to talk about trust.

And I'm going to start
by reminding you

of the standard views
that people have about trust.

I think these are so commonplace

they've become cliches of our society.

And I think there are three.

One's a claim:

there's been a great decline
in trust. Very widely believed.

The second is an aim:
we should have more trust.

And the third is a task:
we should rebuild trust.

I think that the claim, the aim
and the task are all misconceived.

So what I'm going
to try to tell you today

is a different story about
a claim, an aim and a task,

which I think give one quite
a lot better purchase on that matter.

First the claim.

Why do people think trust has declined?

And if I really think about it
on the basis of my own evidence,

I don't know the answer.

I don't -- I'm inclined to think
it may have declined in some activities

or some institutions and
it might have grown in others.

I don't have an overview.

But of course I can look
at the opinion polls.

And the opinion polls are supposedly

the sourse of the belief
that trust has declined.

When you actually look
at opinion polls across time,

there is not much evidence for that.

That's to say the people
who were mistrusted 20 years ago

principally journalists and politicians,
are still mistrusted.

And the people who were
highly trusted 20 years ago

are sill rather highly trusted:
judges, nurses.

The rest of us is in between.

And by the way,
the average person in the street

is almost exactly midway.

But is that good evidence?

What opinion polls record
is of course opinions.

What else can they record?

So, they are looking at

the generic attitudes
that people report

when you ask them certain questions.

Do you trust politicians?

Do you trust teachers?

Now, if somebody said to you:

"Do you trust greengrocers?"

"Do you trust fishmongers?"

"Do you trust elementary
school teachers?"

You would probably begin
by saying: "To do what?"

And that would be
a perfectly sensible response.

And you might say,

when you understood
the answer to that,

"Well, I trust some of them,
but not others."

That's a perfectly rational thing.

In short, in our real lives,

we seek to place trust
in a differenciated way.

We don't make an assumption
that the level of trust

that we will have

in every instance of a certain type

of official office helder
or type of person

is going to be uniform.

I might, for example,
say that I certainly trust

a certain elementary
school teacher I know,

to teach the reception class to read,

but no way to drive the school mini bus.

(Laughter)

I might after all know
that she wasn't a good driver.

I might trust my most loquacious friend

to keep a conversation going,

but perhaps not to keep a secret.

Simple.

So if we've got those evidence
in our ordinary lives,

in the way that trust is differenciated,

why do we sort of drop
all that intelligence

when we think about trust
more abstractly?

I think the polls are very bad guides
to the level of trust

that actually exists, because
they try to obliterate

the good judgement
that goes into placing trust.

Secondly, what about the aim?

The aim is to have more trust.

Well, frankly, I think
that's a stupid aim.

It's not what I would aim at.

I would aim to have
more trust in the trustworthy,

but not in the untrustworthy.

(Laughter)

In fact, I aim positively to try
not to trust the untrustworthy.

(Laughter)

And I think of those people
who, for example,

placed their savings with
the very aptly named Mr Madoff,

who then made off with them,

(Laughter)

And I think of them,

I think: "Well, yes, too much trust."

More trust is not
an intelligent aim in this life.

Intelligently placed and intelligently
refused trust is the proper aim.

Well one once said that,

one says: "Yeah, ok,
that means that what matters

in the first place is not trust,
but trustworthiness."

It's judging how trustworthy
people are in particular respects.

And i think this judgement
requires us to look at three things:

Are they competent?

Are they honest?

Are they reliable?

And if we find that a person is
competent in the relevant matters,

and reliable, and honest,

we'll have a pretty good reason
to trust them,

because they'll be trustworthy.

But if, on the other hand,
they are unreliable, we might not.

I have friends who
are competent and honest,

but I would not trust them
to post a letter,

because they are forgetful.

(Laughter)

I have friends who are very confident

they can do certain things,

but I realise that they overestimate
their own competence.

I'm very glad to say I don't think
I have many friends

who are competent and reliable,
but extremely dishonest.

(Laughter)

If so, I haven't yet spotted it.

(Laughter)

But that's what we are looking for,

trustworthiness before trust.

Trust is the response.

Trustworthiness is what we have to judge.

And, of course, it is difficult.

Across the last few decades,
we tried to construct

systems of accountability
for all sorts of institutions,

and professionals, and officials,
and so on,

that we'll make it easier for us
to judge their trustworthiness.

A lot of these systems
have the converse effect.

They don't work
as they are supposed to.

I remember I was talking
with a midwife, who said:

"Well, you see the problem is
it takes longer to do

the paper work than
to deliver the baby."

(Laughter)

And all over our public life
or institutional life,

we find that problem
that the system of accountability,

that is meant to secure trustworthiness
and evidence of trustworthiness

is actually doing the opposite.

It is distracting people who have
to do difficult tasks, like midwives

from doing them, by requiring them

to "tick the boxes", as we say.

You can all give your own examples there.

So, so much for the aim.

The aim, I think,
is more trustworthiness,

and that's going to be different
if we are trying to be trustworthy

and communicate our trustworthiness
to other people,

and if we are trying to judge
whether other people or office helders,

or polititians are trustworthy.

It's not easy, it is judgement,

and simple reaction, attitudes don't do

don't do adequately here.

Now, thirdly, the task.

Calling the task rebuilding trust,

I think, also gets things backwards.

It suggests that you
and I should rebuild trust.

Well, we could do that for ourselves.

We can rebuild a bit of trustworthiness,

we can do it two people together,
trying to improve trust.

But trust, in the end, is distinctive,

because it's given by other people.

You can't rebuild what
other people gave you.

You have to give them
the basis for giving you their trust.

So you have to, I think, be trustworthy

and that, of course,
is because you can't fool

all of the people
all of the time. Usually.

(Laughter)

But you also have
to provide usable evidence

that you are trustworthy.

How to do it?

Well, everyday, all over
the place, it's being done

by ordinary people, by officials,
by institutions quite effectively.

Let me give you
a simple commercial example.

The shop where I buy my socks

says I may take them back.

And they don't ask any questions,

they take them back
and give me the money

or give me the pair of socks
of the color I wanted.

That's super.

I trust them, because
they have made themselves

vulnerable to me.

There's a big lesson in that.

If you make yourself vulnerable
to the other party,

then that is very good evidence

that you are trustworthy,

and you have confidence
in what you are saying.

So, in the end, I think
what we are aiming for

is not very difficult to discern.

It is relationships in which
people are trustworthy

and can judge when and how

the other person is trustworthy.

So the moral of all this is

we need to think
much less about trust,

let alone about attitudes of trust,

detected or misdetected by opinion polls,

much more about being trustworthy

and how you give people adequate,

useful and simple evidence
that you are trustworthy.

Thanks.

(Applause)