Why are people so trusting? Smart people are more trusting.

We are accustomed to believe that distrust and caution help to recognize a lie. Researchers Nancy Carter and Mark Weber** from the Rothman School of Management at the University of Toronto (Canada) decided to check if this is true. First, they asked a group of MBA students a simple question - who do they think is better at detecting lies, the gullible person or the calculating cynic? As expected, 85% of the students responded that cynics are better at spotting lies. Then Carter and Weber tested the students to determine their individual levels of gullibility and asked them to watch some videos of mock job interviews.

The candidates for the position in these videos had to do their best to present themselves in the best possible light and get the job. At the same time, half were told that they could lie three times during the interview. After watching the video, the participants in the experiment had to evaluate the honesty of the characters in the videos and say which of them they themselves would have hired for a position in the place of the employer.

Surprisingly, participants with the most high level gullibility turned out to be the best lie detectors. They more accurately determined which of the interviewees in the videos were lying. On the contrary, distrustful ones were worse at recognizing lies and agreed to hire one of the liar candidates.

Researchers put forward two main hypotheses why gullible people recognize lies more easily:

1. Subtle perception. People can become more gullible over time because they are sensitive to lies. If you can easily spot when you're being lied to, you'll be less worried about being fooled.

2. Willingness to take risks. Living in society means taking risks to some extent. Those who are not afraid of this risk and actively make contact with strangers, over time, learn to identify lies more accurately. Anyone who avoids social contact never develops the skill to distinguish lies from truth. Of course, in addition to these factors, it is worth taking into account individual characteristics person. Some of us have natural gift read body language and more developed social skills, others have to work harder on it.

Whatever the explanation, one thing is clear – by trusting people, sometimes for no reason at all, we end up winning. Problem suspicious person that by not trusting strangers even a little bit, he misses potential opportunities communication. Let's say a barely familiar person invites you to a restaurant. Rejecting an invitation out of fear that he may have ulterior motives is safer, but at the same time you lose the chance to meet a friend for life.

It's the same with business. Trust is the foundation business relations. Profitable deals are concluded on the basis of mutual trust- everyone contributes, although often does not have full information about the partner.

trusting people rather, they determine when they are being lied to, and can enter into social contacts on early stages relationships, gaining an advantage in both personal and professional life.

*Poll of the Public Opinion Foundation.

** N. L. Carter, J. Mark Weber "Not Pollyannas: Higher Generalized Trust Predicts Lie Detection Ability". Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2010; No. 1 (3).

How to trust people, are you a person? One day you may learn that amazing and pleasant things can happen when you stop cultivating cynicism and allow yourself to see the best in people. I want to tell you a real, not fictional story.

Two friends were just walking the streets big city when a skinny teenager came up and asked for money to buy milk. One of his friends gave him 20, while his lesser friend was at a loss. A few days later, when they were in the same area again, the teenager approached them again. Yes, the cynical friend thought about what the teenager knows easy way mining. But instead of asking for money again, he thanked them for what they had already given him and told them how he managed to get some food and now he feels much more positive about life. Then he just moved on.

Some might say that one friend was too gullible, but some might say that the other was too skeptical. No one wants to be in the role of being cheated and always giving, but is that reason enough to be a badass cynic? We usually think that people who are very gullible act like naive. But this is not always the case, because if we are more trusting, then this can make us better, and strangely enough, teach us to better understand people.

On this occasion, a study was conducted by Ph.D. Carter at the University of Toronto. In her experiment, she asked participants to choose which applicant was dishonest after watching video interviews in which half of the candidates told lies three times. It turned out that people who rated as highly gullible were more likely to detect cheating, particularly by paying attention to subtle cues (some studies have shown that liars tend to fidget more and speak in raised tones of voice).

Didn't you feel a pang of envy when you learned about Carter's study? These people, who are reproachfully told that you, it turns out, can rely on their instincts to accurately figure out someone without total distrust, while in another category of people their reflex is triggered, they are used to being careful with almost everyone and are less versed in people…

To be continued on the benefits of gullibility…

Credulity as a personality trait is the tendency to accept any information without critical reflection or analysis, the constant readiness to believe the word, the promise of another person or group.
One day, the piglet decided to cross the river, because he saw there a huge compost heap, which had long been the subject of his dreams. Approaching the river, he doubted whether he could ford it. - I wonder if the river is deep? he said aloud. “No, not deep,” answered the mole, who heard his question and understood what the pig wanted to do. - Are you sure? - said the piglet. - Certainly! Encouraged, the piglet ran into the water and almost drowned, because the bottom near the shore went down sharply. Barely getting out of the water, he attacked the mole in anger. “It’s strange,” said the mole, “ducks have always had water only up to their chests.

A gullible person, like a snowplow, indiscriminately scoops up all the information that falls on his head and believes all the gossip, lies, slander and rumors: “Have you heard that Mamygin is being filmed? For his debauchery, for drunkenness, for debauchery. And by the way, your neighbor is being taken away - a scoundrel, because he looks like Beria. He is a real find for pranks on April Fool's Day. Like a tourist, following indiscriminately all the signs on his way, he is ready to believe Ostap Bender multiplied by Baron Munchausen.

You can't bring in everyone who helps you cross the street. Credulity is associated with deceit and fanaticism, it shows blindness of perception, which means: “I do not intend to face the truth, I do not want to see real world I just want to blindly accept. She is warned: “How many people you don’t trust, in the end it will still turn out that you had to distrust even more,” but she ignores these remarks and says about the same as Pushkin’s hero: “But pretend! This look can express everything so wonderfully! Ah, it is not difficult to deceive me!.. I myself am glad to be deceived!”

Not wanting to critically perceive reality, to be mobile in their judgments and assessments, a gullible person takes a selfish position, he is not able to perceive the truth: “Yes, I already know this and trust this.” For example, he heard from an old woman how sciatica is treated. On this, for him, further knowledge and opinions of specialists are exhausted. Mind off false ego, corrections of consciousness are excluded. A humble person is capable of active listening, the perception of new knowledge, he is never trusting. But the trouble is that gullibility is not active, attentive listening, it is not humble and therefore does not doubt its false knowledge. Perceiving everything as truth, it does not develop further, being satisfied with the first false information. Wisdom and rationality are friends with incredulity. Being “humble novices”, that is, those who know how to listen and hear, they are ready to listen to everyone, but choose where is the truth and where is the lie. They understand that believing everything indiscriminately is ignorance and stupidity. Credulity reproduces fanaticism. If she is told that in 20 minutes of sexual intimacy a person loses 200 kcal, she concludes: “Stupid people who exhaust themselves with diets and running, it is much easier to lose weight by having sex a hundred times a month.”

At all times, gullibility has been a tool for adapting to the world around us. For example, the ancient Egyptians trustingly treated the priests as the bearers of knowledge accumulated by previous generations. It’s more expensive for yourself not to believe the priest, because he knows what to do with a snake bite, how to treat diseases or when to expect natural misfortunes.

A gullible person, as a rule, unconsciously shifts the responsibility for negative events in his life to the one to whom he is gullible, in this example to the priest. He mentally says: "I trust this priest - it means that he must save me from the misfortunes and difficulties of life." The self-deception of gullibility makes her irresponsible and dependent on other people. Having created idealized exaggerated images of some personalities, believing in the inviolability of their authority, gullibility replaces trust with false gullibility: “I trusted you,” she shouts, although there could be no question of any trust.

To trust others, you must trust yourself. Trust in yourself begins with responsibility for everything that happens in your life: “I trust myself without attaching excessive importance to other people's assessments. I trust people and the world without caring if they trust me." With this position, the emphasis is purely on personal responsibility, other people and the world as a whole are in the background. In credulity, the emphasis shifts towards annoying demands and unreasonable claims to another person: “I trusted you - therefore you have no right to deceive me.” In other words, gullibility “runs into” the freedom of another person, demanding reciprocity. In gullibility, as A. S. Pushkin correctly noted, the desire to be deceived is hidden. Only then will she feel like a victim or be able to place the blame for the deceit on another person.

Credulity does not always deserve negative assessments. Without gullibility, people would long ago have become embittered at the world and each other. Being a childish personality trait, it looks naive and stupid in the adult world. However, in family relationships in the reckless gullibility of a wife lies the road to her fidelity. Women's fidelity is generated by gullibility. The mental mechanism of female fidelity is switched on from the moment when she believed in her husband, that is, the gullibility of a wife is based on faith in her husband. The credulity of a woman in relation to her husband is a desire to receive protection, to completely give herself into his hands, to lay responsibility for her future and the future of her children on him.

Women, like children, are generously endowed with natural gullibility, they trust their mind, hence the tendency to gullibility. A woman loves with her ears and is able to believe utter nonsense, if only they were pleasant to her and tickled her excited Ego. When a person likes what he is told, he becomes faithful and trusting. A woman deprived of gullibility loses her purity. It is impossible to be a good wife and be distrustful of her husband. When she sees in men only males, cattle and lustful goats, only thinking about how to drag her into a bed, she gives the impression of an “abandoned woman” embittered at the world.

On the contrary, male gullibility has a detrimental effect on family relationships. A trusting husband is a disrespectful, haughty wife. When a husband comes home from work and begins to boringly, in detail, describe all his anxieties, worries and fears, the wife's respect for him decreases. A daughter with a gullible father also becomes overly gullible, so there are high risks that she will be deceived by any love rogues or gigolos. A son with a gullible father runs the risk of becoming a boor.

Credulity is more of a feminine personality trait than a masculine one. A man is a family security service, he sometimes needs to show distrust, caution, discretion and composure. Listening to the verbal juggling of some swindler, he thinks: "I willingly believe any animal, even a hedgehog, but I can wait for you." A man trusts reason more than mind and feelings, female emotionality, and with it excessive gullibility, are alien to his nature. He will prefer to reveal the "stuffing" of the intentions of other people before launching them into the family.

The credulity of decent people is the main weapon of liars. If a bird is caught, it is fed with sugar. Excessive gullibility loves sweet talk and, becoming the goal different kind scammers, swindlers, manipulators and deceivers, brings a lot of trouble to its carrier. It serves as a kind of indicator of a person's inability to adapt to the conditions of the outside world.

Anatoly Barbacaru, a former professional card player of extra class, repeatedly writes in his book "Notes of a Sharpie" that playing cards well is half the battle. In order to win, you need to play on the credulity of a potential partner, his opinion that you play no better than him. Here is an example from his book: “... on Privoz, at the entrance, in the most stinking place of human abomination, a rural citizen stood bewildered. In inconceivable striped trousers with a crotch at the knees, in an unimaginable speckled oversized jacket, shiny with garden dirt, in a sideways cap corresponding to the costume ensemble. He rummaged in his pockets, looking for something. Turning it inside out, he brought out their contents into the light of God: dirty ribbons, market receipts, donut bits, a handkerchief, with which he must have wiped his boots. And suddenly - a greasy shaggy deck of cards and a stack, a thick stack of dirty bills of various sizes. I naively and trustingly kept the extracted things in my hand for the time being. - What, dad, did you sow? - sweetly sympathized with one of the owners of this not the most comfortable place under the sun, who appeared near the citizen. - Shaw? - responded dad, without interrupting the search. - Oh, cards, or what? - was surprised like a sympathizer. - Well. - You sho, dad, play cards? - obviously sycophantly strayed into a rural dialect approached. “I’m playing,” the citizen confirmed trustingly, like a neighbor through a wattle fence. What to pull. Lured this imported toady peasant into the game. The peasant loaded him with eighteen pieces. And I had to pay. Because the peasant's nickname was Maestro.

Either a person is stupid and stupid, or overly trusting, however, this is one and the same thing. “Excessive gullibility often turns out to be stupidity,” wrote Johann Nestroy, “excessive distrustfulness always turns out to be a misfortune.” Overconfidence is to a man what ivy is to a tree. While still small, green ivy began to peer into a tall, sprawling tree. It looked proud and impregnable. The ivy creeping at the very roots could only dream of the height and beauty of the tree. It slowly curled around him, singing about his strength and beauty, and the tree, listening to sweet speeches, did not mind at all. He liked the speeches of this little ivy, and it's okay if he rises a little and sees the world from a height, because he did not cause any inconvenience, and sweet speeches so caressed his ears! And the ivy rose higher and higher every day, its embrace became stronger and stronger, and one day the tree realized that it could no longer free itself from its importunity, and therefore had to put up with the impudent neighborhood. But the ivy did not stop, it enveloped the branches and leaves with its tenacious vines. The tree was dying, suffocating for air, but the ivy paid no attention to this. He achieved what he had never dared to dream of before, now he was at his best. From the side, the tree seemed still sprawling and green, but coming closer, it became clear that it had died and dried up because of its trust. The insidious ivy was at its best, but the fate of the tree did not bother him at all.

Petr Kovalev

culture

Contrary to popular belief, smart people are more likely to trust others, and those who have a level intellect below, not so gullible.

And the ability to trust others not only has a positive effect on society, but also makes a person happier and healthier, scientists say.

Researchers from Oxford University analyzed the data General National Poll by asking questions relating to socioeconomic characteristics, behavior and social attitudes.

Feeling of trust

They found that participants who scored high on the IQ scale were more likely to trust others than those who scored higher. low level intellect.

This took into account factors such as family status, education and income.

Scientists believe that smart people are better at character, and tend to develop relationships with those people who are unlikely to betray them. In addition, smart people are better able to assess the situation.

The results of the study confirm that the ability to reasonably judge the character of others is a distinctive part of human intelligence, which appeared through natural selection.

Previous studies have shown that people who trust others have better health and happier.

How to learn to trust?

People can be quite cruel, and past wounds can leave scars. The ability to trust other people after a betrayal can be difficult for some people. Here are some tips:

Look for the good

People who have been betrayed in the past tend to look to others bad traits. Distrust is hard to get rid of, but try to find the good in people in general, and it may become easier for you to trust your loved ones.

Communicate with those you love

Talk openly with people you would like to have around and trust. Try to be honest with them and they will be honest with you.

Say goodbye to fears

Fear of being hurt in the future leads to mistrust. Get rid of the fear that you will be abandoned, cheated on, lied to, or in some other way undermine your trust. To learn to trust, you need to free your relationship from fears.

Love yourself

By thinking about the reasons why you cannot trust others, and by replaying the events that led to the mistrust, you can prevent it.

Trust gradually

If you have been seriously betrayed in the past, it may be difficult for you to trust others. Force yourself to step out of your comfort zone and pick one person you can trust. Perhaps everyone does not deserve your trust, but to stop trusting is to stop loving and living.

Cultivate confidence

Take pride in the fact that the people in your life trust you. If you feed on the trust that has been placed in you, you will see others return it. Trust others and they will trust you.