Through her research, Dr Heyns – who has a particular interest in the development of models for interpersonal- and organisational trust within workplace contexts characterised by transition and uncertainty – strives to promote pathways for individuals and organisations to flourish.
In the following opinion piece, she shares her thoughts on the global truth crisis.
Annual survey paints a distressing picture
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, a global trust and credibility survey, the global trust index shows dramatic declines across the board in every facet tracked in almost all of the 28 countries surveyed. The trust index gives an indication of the level of trust respondents from participating countries have in government, non-government organisations, business and media.
The results speak to what other experts have coined as “the post-trust era” and the subsequent blurring of the lines between honesty and deception, truth and deliberate misrepresentations and what is factual or fake. It is harder than ever to know who and what to believe and it creates a crisis of trust which impairs our ability to address and resolve pressing problems.
We may even contribute to the problem when we fail to examine innate biases that may distort our perceptions and cause us to make unwise trust decisions.
Pitfalls amidst the truth crisis
An initial step would be to become more trust savvy and this can be done by understanding and overcome a number of innate biases.
In this regard, one of the prominent human tendencies at question, concerns our preference to trust (only) information that supports our own world view. This tendency leads to serious value clashes between social groups which in turn makes it even harder to recognise whatever mutual interests and values there might be.
Closely associated with the above, is our tendency to regard the opinions of people who are closer and more familiar to us as more trustworthy, while closing our minds to insights coming from those we don’t feel comfortable with. There is nothing wrong with the need to belong, but it should not cause us to be so desperately loyal to the in group that we keep silent when we should speak up, compromise our integrity by turning a blind eye to corruption, support injustices or lose our decision making skills.
Bridging the trust divide
In seeking to bridge the trust divide, we need to be wary of over confidence bias, which leads us to appraise ourselves as smarter, more knowledgeable and more capable than we actually are. While confidence in itself is desirable, over confidence blinds us to accurate feedback from the environment and clouds our judgement.
Although the list of possible biases is in no way complete, it serves to sensitise us to the possibility that we may unwittingly contribute to the trust crises because we may act in ways that serve the best interest of only ourselves or, at best, those whom we perceive to be more similar to us at the expense of serving a collective good.
Failure to confront our innate biases amounts to short sightedness and a lack of wisdom.
Dr Marita Heyns.
