Seems to me if you can't trust, you can't be trusted

July 12, 2009 8:53 AM

A person's self-rated trustworthiness (how trustworthy you think you are) is correlated with their levels of trust (how willing you are to trust others). Where could I have possibly read this?

I am going crazy. I read an assertion to the effect that self-rated trustworthiness correlates with willingness to trust, and I based a section of my thesis on that argument. The problem is, I read so much, so fast, and didn't take adequate notes, and so now I can't for the life of me recall where I read it. And with keywords like "trust" and "trustworthiness" - even "self-rated trustworthiness" - my searches are coming up with millions of unrelated articles and books.

Does anyone have any idea where I could have read this?

posted by arcticwoman to Education (5 answers total)

Here's a longish article that discusses this and links to Psychology Today. If it's not what you are looking for, it could be a good start.

I knew exactly what you were talking about and it was driving me crazy too!
posted by amicamentis at 9:06 AM on July 12, 2009

There is a large literature involving this very topic in political science, psychology, economics, and sociology. You may look for work by Ronald Inglehart in political science and sociology. In economics, you may want to look for work on the "trust game" or the "investment game."
posted by proj at 11:11 AM on July 12, 2009

A friend of mine was doing research on this very topic. I'll send him this link and ask him. (Does the name Reuben Ng ring a bell?)
posted by divabat at 3:59 PM on July 12, 2009

Response by poster: Don't recognize the name Reuben Ng, but if he talks about something similar that will be just as good as finding what I originally read. Otherwise, I'll riff of something from the link amicamentis gave. It doesn't cite any research, unfortunately, but if I plug that Hume quote (in the article) into google scholar maybe I can find some research that cites it. Thanks for help.
posted by arcticwoman at 6:55 AM on July 13, 2009

Response by poster: Ok, found where I read it. I was sure I had read empirical work on the topic, but looks like it was philosophical. I read it in Trudy Govier's book "Social Trust in Human Communities" and she cites Hobbes' "Leviathan" and Luhmann's "Trust and Power" on this point.
posted by arcticwoman at 8:36 AM on July 16, 2009