Michelle: A 2019 Pew survey found 75% of Americans believe trust in the government has diminished. But here’s the twist: the biggest problem isn't that we don't trust. It's that we trust too easily, and our instincts for fixing broken trust are almost always wrong. Mark: Whoa, hold on. We trust too easily? In this age of cynicism, fake news, and scams? That feels completely backward. My default setting is definitely 'skeptical,' and I thought that was just being smart. Michelle: I know, it sounds counterintuitive, but that's the brilliant, unsettling core of the book we're diving into today: Trust: Why We Deceive and How We're Deceived by David DeSteno. Mark: Right, and DeSteno isn't just a philosopher on this. He's a leading research scientist, and what's fascinating is that his work is deeply personal. It's rooted in his own family's immigrant story and his lifelong observations of how people constantly misjudge each other. Michelle: Exactly. He brings decades of rigorous science to a topic we usually only talk about through anecdotes. The book has been widely praised for finally giving us a real, evidence-based map of how trust actually works. And that map starts in a very surprising place.

Mark: Okay, so if we're all supposedly so cynical, how can he possibly say we trust too easily? I need an example. Michelle: Well, think about the last time you ordered food from a new restaurant on an app. You trusted a stranger, the chef, to handle your food safely. You trusted other strangers, the farmers and distributors, who supplied the ingredients. You trusted the delivery driver, another stranger, to bring it to your door. And you trusted the app itself with your credit card information. Mark: Huh. I’ve never thought about it like that. It’s a massive chain of blind trust, and I do it without a second thought. I just assume everyone will do their job correctly and not, you know, poison me. Michelle: Precisely. DeSteno argues that this "high initial trust" is our default setting. It's not earned; it's granted. We couldn't function in society otherwise. Imagine having to vet every single person in that chain. You'd starve! This default to trust is what makes society work. It lets us change jobs, make friends, and build economies. Mark: That makes sense. It’s like social lubricant. But the book's title implies we get deceived. So where does it all go wrong? If we start with high trust, why does everything feel so broken? Michelle: Because that high initial trust is exceedingly fragile. It can be shattered by the smallest things, often in ways that defy logic. And our attempts to manage it can backfire spectacularly. There’s a fantastic, and slightly horrifying, story in the book about this. Mark: I’m ready. Hit me with it. Michelle: Researchers studied a group of ten day care centers in Israel that had a chronic problem: parents showing up late to pick up their kids. This forced the teachers to stay late, unpaid. It was a clear, albeit minor, violation of social trust. Mark: Yeah, I can see how that would be frustrating. So what did they do? Michelle: They introduced what seems like a perfectly logical solution: a small monetary fine for any parent who was more than ten minutes late. The idea was to create a disincentive. Mark: Okay, that sounds reasonable. A little slap on the wrist to make people more punctual. Did it work? Michelle: It was a catastrophe. The number of late-pickups more than doubled. Mark: What? No way. A fine made the problem worse? How is that even possible? Michelle: Because the fine completely changed the nature of the transaction. Before, being late was an ethical failing, a violation of a social norm. Parents felt guilty because they were inconveniencing the teachers. But the moment a price tag was put on it, the guilt vanished. It was no longer a moral issue; it was a simple economic one. Parents thought, "Oh, I can buy extra time for a few shekels? Great, it's a service I'm now paying for." Mark: That is wild. They basically paid to stop feeling bad about being inconsiderate. The fine destroyed the very trust and goodwill it was meant to protect. Michelle: Exactly. It replaced a relationship based on mutual respect with a cold, calculated transaction. And this is the core of the fragility problem. Trust isn't a rational calculation. It's a psychological state, and when we try to manage it with simplistic, logical rules, we often break it even more. Mark: It’s like if you started tipping your friend for giving you a ride. It would instantly make the relationship weird and transactional, even though you think you're doing something nice. Michelle: A perfect analogy. You've just monetized a friendship. And what's worse, when the day care centers removed the fine, the late pickups didn't go back down. The trust was permanently damaged. Once you turn a relationship into a transaction, it’s almost impossible to go back.

Mark: Okay, that day care story is a great example of how easily trust breaks. But what happens after it's broken? The idea that apologizing—the thing we're taught to do since we're kids—could be a 'trap' is really messing with my head. Isn't saying 'I'm sorry' the first rule of being a decent human? Michelle: It is, and that's why this is one of the most fascinating parts of the book. DeSteno argues that an apology is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it signals remorse and a desire to make things right. That’s the positive signal. But on the other hand, it’s an undeniable admission of guilt. It confirms you’re the one who messed up. Mark: Right, it’s a confession. You’re saying, "Yes, I did the bad thing." Michelle: Exactly. And whether the listener focuses on the remorse or the guilt depends entirely on the type of violation. DeSteno makes a crucial distinction between two types of trust failures: competence violations and integrity violations. Mark: Competence versus integrity. Can you break that down? Michelle: A competence violation is a failure of skill. Your accountant makes an honest mistake on your taxes because they didn't know the new law. A chef accidentally undercooks your chicken. They had good intentions, but they lacked the ability in that moment. Mark: Okay, so it’s an "oops." They messed up, but they weren't trying to hurt me. What’s an integrity violation? Michelle: An integrity violation is a failure of morals. Your accountant intentionally lies on your taxes to get you a bigger refund, putting you at risk. A company knowingly sells a product with a dangerous defect. It’s not about ability; it’s about character. It suggests they have a disregard for what’s right. Mark: Got it. Competence is "can't do," integrity is "won't do right." So how does this change how an apology lands? Michelle: It changes everything. For a competence failure, an apology is incredibly effective. When your accountant says, "I am so sorry, I missed that new tax code, I've already taken a course to update my knowledge and I'll cover any penalties," you focus on the remorse. You think, "Okay, they're a good person who made a mistake and they're fixing it." Trust can be repaired. Mark: That makes sense. You forgive a good person for a mistake. Michelle: But for an integrity violation, an apology can be gasoline on the fire. The book uses the powerful example of the 1998 Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland. The Real IRA, a dissident republican group, planted a car bomb that killed 29 civilians, including children. It was a horrific act. A few days later, they issued an apology, saying civilians were not the intended target and expressing regret. Mark: Wow. They apologized for a bombing? How did people react? Michelle: With fury. One politician called it "weasel words" that couldn't disguise their "murderous culpability." The public didn't hear the remorse; they only heard the confirmation of guilt. The apology was seen as a cynical, self-serving attempt to manage PR. It confirmed they were, in fact, murderers. In an integrity violation, the guilt signal of an apology drowns out everything else. Mark: So for an integrity violation, apologizing just digs the hole deeper. This explains so much about public scandals. Let's take a corporate example. What about the famous Tylenol case from 1982? Where does that fit? Michelle: That's the perfect contrast. In 1982, seven people in Chicago died after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. Someone had tampered with the bottles on store shelves. Johnson & Johnson, the parent company, had no idea how it happened. It wasn't their fault, but it was their product. Mark: So, what did they do? Michelle: They didn't just apologize. They took immediate, massive action. They pulled every single bottle of Tylenol off every shelf in the country—a move that cost them over $100 million. They communicated openly with the public and, most importantly, they fixed the problem by inventing new triple-sealed, tamper-proof packaging. Mark: So they treated it as a massive competence failure. "We failed to foresee this danger and protect you, and here's how we're ensuring it never happens again." Michelle: Precisely. They took responsibility for the competence gap, and their actions screamed sincerity. They rebuilt trust so effectively that Tylenol regained its market share within a year, and it's still the textbook case for crisis management. They showed they were competent and had integrity. The IRA's apology, on the other hand, just confirmed they had none.

Mark: This competence versus integrity framework is a game-changer. But it feels like there's another layer. Even when someone tries to make amends, especially for an integrity breach, we seem to have this insatiable hunger for punishment. Why is it so hard for us to actually forgive and let people move on? Michelle: DeSteno calls this the problem of our "broken balance sheet." Our brains are fundamentally wired for retribution, not necessarily for restoration or rehabilitation. Studies he cites show that when people are asked what kind of information they want before sentencing a criminal, they overwhelmingly choose information related to retribution—the severity of the crime, the harm caused—over information about whether a long sentence would actually deter future crime. Mark: So our gut reaction is "an eye for an eye," even if that doesn't actually make society safer or better. We want to balance the scales. Michelle: Exactly. And it gets even more complicated. The book describes how, after someone violates our trust, we engage in a kind of cognitive revisionism. We look back at all their past good deeds and reinterpret them through the new, negative lens. Mark: Oh, that’s dark. Can you give an example? Michelle: There's a great one about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from before they founded Apple. Jobs got a contract from Atari to build the game Breakout. He told Wozniak they'd split the fee 50/50. Wozniak, a brilliant engineer, pulled four all-nighters and designed the game. Jobs gave him his half of the base fee, but secretly kept the entire, much larger, performance bonus for himself. Mark: Classic early Jobs, from what I've read. A clear integrity violation. Michelle: A decade later, Wozniak found out. And he said what hurt wasn't just the money. It was that the lie retroactively tainted their entire friendship and collaboration. He started questioning everything. That initial act of "let's build this together" was no longer a moment of shared passion; it was re-framed as a calculated move by Jobs to exploit him. The good deed was erased from the ledger. Mark: Wow, so we're basically wired to be prosecutors, not healers. We rewrite history to confirm our new belief that this person is fundamentally untrustworthy. It feels so bleak. Is there any way to fix this broken system in our heads? Michelle: There is, but it requires fighting against our deepest instincts. DeSteno points to real-world models that do this. The most powerful example in the book is the story of Father Greg Boyle and Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. Mark: I've heard of them. They work with former gang members, right? Michelle: Yes. In a city ravaged by gang violence, where the justice system was a revolving door of punishment and retribution, Father Boyle did something completely different. He didn't focus on punishment. He focused on kinship. He offered jobs, therapy, tattoo removal—a community. He saw the person, not just their worst act. Mark: He was treating their past actions as a product of their circumstances—a failure of the system, in a way—rather than a permanent statement of their integrity. Michelle: Exactly. He offered a path to redemption that our retributive instincts often deny. He famously says, "We are all more than the worst thing we've ever done." Homeboy Industries is a living, breathing testament to the idea that if you create the conditions for trust and healing, redemption is possible. It’s a model that works, but it requires us to override that primal urge for an eye for an eye. Mark: It’s incredible because it’s a system built on the assumption that people want to be good, which is a radical act of trust in itself. Michelle: It is. And it shows that while our internal balance sheet might be broken, it's not unfixable. It just requires a more thoughtful, more humane, and more courageous approach than our gut reactions usually allow.

Michelle: When you pull it all together—our default to trust, the fragility of that trust, the apology trap, and our thirst for retribution—you see a fascinating picture of human nature. DeSteno's work shows that our social world is built on a foundation of trust, but the tools we instinctively reach for when that foundation cracks are often the very things that cause the whole structure to collapse. Mark: It really feels like the core lesson is to slow down. Our snap judgments about trust and betrayal are powerful, but they're often wrong. The day care fine seemed logical. A harsh punishment seems just. An apology seems right. But the data shows the reality is far more complex. Michelle: That's the perfect summary. The goal isn't to become more cynical or to stop trusting. It's to become more discerning. It’s about learning to diagnose the break correctly. Is this a crack in their competence, which can be patched with an apology and a plan? Or is it a flaw in their fundamental integrity, which might mean the wisest move is to walk away? Mark: It makes you wonder, the next time you feel betrayed, is your first reaction about actually fixing the problem, or is it about satisfying that deep-seated, almost primal, need for retribution? Are you trying to restore the relationship or just balance the scales in your own mind? Michelle: And that’s the question that can change everything. DeSteno reminds us that everyone is more than the worst thing they've ever done. The challenge he leaves us with is not just for the person who broke the trust, but for all of us: to create a world where redemption is actually possible. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.