Trusting Strangers - Who Do We Trust and Why?

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All In The Mind 29 min 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 2 days ago

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How do we make snap trust judgments within the first hundred milliseconds?

Lynne Malcolm 0:00

Before we begin today's All in the Mind, let me tell you about another podcast that may interest you. If you've been spending your life knee-deep in reality and the news is getting too much, you can check out another RN podcast that's more about the spiritual side of life. It's called Soul Search, and it's presented by the award-winning author and historian, Meredith Lake. It's full of interesting people talking about surprising things – and you can find it wherever you normally get your podcasts. Hi, it's All In The Mind on RN. I'm Lynne Malcolm. When you spot a stranger and you're about to interact with them for the first time, how do you decide whether you can trust them or not? Within just a fraction of a second, we form opinions about how trustworthy someone is, along with many other judgements, and that's well before we've even had a chance to interact with them.

Lynne Malcolm 1:01

These assessments are often inaccurate, but they can have a huge impact on how we treat people. So how exactly do our brains form these snap judgements? Well, today on All In The Mind, science reporter Carl Smith is examining the subtle processing at work in this single moment.

Carl Smith 1:24

We've all experienced this scenario, probably multiple times every day. You clock a stranger in a shop or walking down the street, and before we've even noticed we've done this, we've formed several judgements about them. These judgements are often subconscious, but they shape our behaviour, whether we look up and smile or cross the street. And one of the core judgements we make is whether or not to trust someone.

Dr. Anna Buchler-Reitig 1:52

You don't have many cues in this very first moment, right? You basically only have what you see. And the first thing you look at when you meet another person is usually their eyes and their faces. So after something like 100 milliseconds already, you start to make trade judgments about the other based on their facial features.

Carl Smith 2:12

This is Dr. Anna Buchler-Reitig, social psychologist at the Leibniz University, Hanover.

Dr. Anna Buchler-Reitig 2:18

And there are studies showing that that there is basically two dimensions on which faces or the physical features can be and are classified. And one dimension is dominance. Some faces have dominant features or not so dominant features. And the other dimension is trustworthiness. So there seem to be some aspects about the face that just makes this face appear more or less trustworthy. So this is really the curse of the first impression, you can say, that this very instant, this snapshot we receive is really is taken as an indication, as a trustworthy indication, if you will, about this person.

Carl Smith 2:53

When we see a stranger, we do dwell on facial features. But within that same fraction of a second, Dr. Buchler-Reitig says our minds are also gleaning several other key bits of important information.

Dr. Anna Buchler-Reitig 3:06

There are the clothes as well. So there are some things that are really signs or signals for, say, authority or status. And that is, of course, when you meet somebody in a lab coat, but also when somebody wears expensive suits. Another thing is the emotional expression at this very moment. So very often we take a state, for instance, somebody who's smiling, who's happy at the moment, as an indication for a trait. So this is a friendly person. What we're looking for in this particular moment is also whether we detect any signs that show us that the other person is like us. And we tend to trust people more who are like us.

What facial dimensions (dominance vs. trustworthiness) influence our first‑impression of strangers?

Dr. Anna Buchler-Reitig 3:43

We can simulate them better. We can predict their behavior better. So if somebody looks like us, that's probably somebody we can trust because we kind of know how we work ourselves.

Carl Smith 3:52

Just how accurate are these first impressions? And do they linger? You know, how sticky are they? Do they stick with us?

Dr. Anna Buchler-Reitig 4:00

Yeah, the answer is, unfortunately, like it's the worst combination. First of all, especially when it comes to trustworthiness, these first impressions based on physical features of faces, they are not accurate. There has been a theory around the kernel of truth theory. What researchers considered that some traits might actually be reflected in facial features.