‘Trust — The key to building psychologically informed relationships?’

13.11.2020: When reflecting on the past week as the Lead for Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE) at the national youth homeless charity: Centrepoint, I have been thinking most about a busy week of facilitating reflective practice sessions for our frontline staff; both remotely and in COVID compliant settings face to face. One of the themes from these session(s) has been around the concept of ‘trust’. Specifically, not only how I can create a psychologically ‘safe or secure space’ for staff to speak openly in, but moreover how we as an organisation can create such spaces for homeless young people. This group may often have had negative past experiences of betrayal, rejection or broken family relationships, which means they may struggle to be able to trust us enough in order to share their difficulties with us so that we can then provide them with appropriate support. In particular, the Centrepoint PIE framework of Attachment Theory (c.f. Bowlby, 1967) suggests that it is important for us to acknowledge these experiences and the impact that they may have on how our homeless young people react when we ask them to build relationships with us. Consequently, I have been reflecting on how one of the most significant elements or the ‘key’ to building any relationship with another person is the importance of ‘trust’.

So why is ‘trust’ as a concept so critical? Rotter (1970) argues that ‘the entire fabric of our day-to-day living, of our social world, rests on trust … almost all our decisions involve trusting someone else’ (p.443). In our society right now, we are being asked to ‘trust the science’ as to why we are all making sacrifices and adjusting our daily lives in a second national COVID lock-down, and we are also being trusted to follow the new ‘rules’. In addition, we can see in America at the moment, the potential damage or consequences to democracy when the key aspects of this (e.g. fair and free elections) are questioned, with allegations of ‘voter fraud’ being made by certain politicians. Even here in the UK, our international standing could be compromised in the future if we are not trusted to adhere to the constructs of international law as we negotiate post Brexit trade agreements.

Consequently, psychologists have identified that ‘interpersonal’ trust is a social construct of far-reaching significance. For example, as early as the 1950’s, the famous developmental psychologist Erik Erikson described ‘trust’ as being the ‘first task of the ego’ (1950, p. 221), noting that the ability to trust others is necessary to form relationships and to function in the social world. Of course, there are often risks to forming relationships in any social situation. We have to trust that others will not attack us, breach our confidence or reject us, and without this capacity to ‘trust’ others, it would be hard for us to accept these relationship uncertainties. Thus, as Arrow (1974) notes, trust is ‘a lubricant for social systems’ (p.23) and underpins all social relationships, whether in intimate relationships or marriage (Fehr, 1988), between employer and employee (Kramer, 1998; Kreps, 1990), or as noted above, between a government and its citizens in a democracy (Fukuyama, 1995). Moreover, given that a PIE is all about relationships (c.f. Keats et al, 2012); trust is therefore an important concept to consider in the formation of these, whether with our work colleagues or the homeless young people that we support.

One definition of trust is that it is ‘a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based on the positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another’ (Rousseau at al, 1998, p.395). Therefore, what is critical are the notions of vulnerability and expectation. We make ourselves ‘vulnerable’ when we enter a relationship with another person, whether this relationship is personal or professional as we reveal a part of ourselves to another. We also have an expectation that there will be a positive outcome to this, so the risk of opening up or trusting another is worth it. Simpson (2007) also argues that trust can be defined as a ‘specific set of socially learned expectations that people hold about various social systems, ranging from other people to social organisations to the larger moral social order’ and that it is ‘a set of beliefs regarding the extent to which others are or will be concerned about our personal welfare and best interests’ (p.589). Finally, Rempel et al (1985) have concluded that interpersonal trust involves the assumption of the other person as reliable and predictable, that they are concerned with our needs, that they can be relied upon to help us, and that we feel confidence in the strength of our relationship with them.

As I looked at some of the research evidence on this the concept of trust this week, it was interesting to briefly look at some economic research on trust in business, which often argues that trust is rational and follows from us making an analysis of the risks and benefits in a particular situation. However, psychologists note that trust is actually not just a ‘rational decision making process’ but is also strongly effected by our emotions (Dunning & Fetchenhauer, 2011). For example, when thinking about whom we can trust, we can base our decision to trust another person on how we anticipate we may feel afterwards. Will we feel relieved or positive if our trust is honoured, or will we feel embarrassed or angry if it is violated? These anticipatory emotions can affect the decision to trust or not, and of course are often impacted by our previous experiences of relationships and whether we have had trusting secure attachments or have been let down, rejected or abandoned.

Social psychologists in particular tend to interpret our behaviours as a result of factors inherent in the individual, the situation that the individual finds themselves in and the interaction between these (e.g. Kruger, 2009; Lewin, 1936). Thus our social behaviours, such as trusting another person, are the result of many interacting variables, such as our individual personalities, our social identity and our expectations or experiences. Research has shown that some individuals have a higher underlying propensity to trust others (Evans & Revelle, 2008; Rotter, 1967), particularly in novel or ambiguous situations when we may not have much experience to reflect upon. However, trust in established relationships is more often determined by our previous experiences of that relationship. For example, no matter how optimistic or trusting a person you are, if you have experience of having been disappointed by particular friends or even professional workers in the past, you are more likely to hesitate to trust them in the future.

Regarding the situation or context, research indicates that you are more likely to trust someone whom you perceive has a shared social identity with yourself, or perhaps you can ‘relate to’ (Brewer, 1986; 2008). This trust might be motivated because you expect that members of the same group will reciprocate and co-operate with each other, and if they do not then this is punished by the ‘group’ norms. Trust generally decreases when the social distance between the two parties increases, hence our mistrust of the unfamiliar or unknown. In other words, you are more likely to trust others if you perceive them as familiar and socially similar, therefore finding ‘common ground’ is important as this builds trust. For example, Glaeser et al (2000) found trust increased as people spent more time together or had common friends. Trusting those in our ‘in-group’ at the expense perhaps of not trusting our ‘out-group’ is just a mental shorthand that helps us to make quick and simple decisions in a complex social world. This has been argued to be because we project our own characteristics and social values onto other members of the group (Kruger & DiDonato, 2008), thereby because we regard ourselves as trustworthy, then so must those who we perceive to be similar to us. This is important when we think about why a homeless young person might not trust the professionals who are trying to support them, but perhaps trust their peers or in some cases their fellow ‘gang members’ instead. Moreover, it can explain why different departments or teams within an organisation may struggle to trust each other unless they have shared values and goals.

Our previous experiences also effect trust. Some researchers argue that most people are trusting or give others the benefit of the doubt by default (Schul et al, 2004; 2008) and we do not need to think about possible consequences. However, if we have been recently negatively impacted by a breach or betrayal of trust, or our past experiences have shown us that there are negative consequences to us personally to trust another, then perhaps it can take us a bit longer to trust again in the future. Of course, this makes sense, as this cautious approach has positive survival value in order to protect ourselves psychologically and avoid us becoming hurt or experiencing overwhelming negative emotions. As our PIEineers (i.e. the ex- and current homeless young people working with Centrepoint advising on our PIE) noted last year when thinking about the importance of relationships to them; “trusting relationships take time and space to build, especially if we’ve been hurt before”.

Specifically, Attachment Theory (e.g. Bowlby, 1973) proposes that we have mental representations of ourselves and others, known as ‘Attachment Working Models’ or AWM’s that are formed as a result of early interactions with our primary attachment figures or carers. These AWM’s can actually organise how we think, feel and act in later relationships with others. If our AWM’s are ‘secure’ because our early experiences with our caregivers has generally been positive, supportive and caring, this will impact on our future relationships differently than if our AWM’s are ‘insecure’ because our early caregiver experiences were rejecting, suffocating, abandoning or disorganised. For example, Mikulincer (1998) showed in a series of psychology studies that different attachment styles (e.g. ‘secure’ or ‘insecure’) can impact upon how much we trust others in adulthood, how we recall past memories of relationships, what goals we have in our relationships, and even how we cope with any violations of trust. Unsurprisingly, those whose who had ‘insecure’ past attachments or AWM’s were less trusting of others in the future, were more likely to expect to be betrayed or let down and reacted in more maladaptive ways when their trust was broken (Baldwin et al, 1996).

Trusting another person is therefore risky and influenced by many factors. However, being able to trust another is arguably essential in not only being able to build personal or professional relationships with other people, but also as a key concept in holding together the wider fabric of our society. We have to be able to trust in our institutions or social systems, as well as those we are in close contact with in our social world. In working with homeless young people, we therefore need to have an awareness of this issue of ‘trust’ and perhaps not take it personally when despite our best efforts to engage and form a relationship with someone we are trying to help, they push us away. Perhaps we can reflect that it is not about us, but about what we represent to them. Perhaps their early experiences of relationships or attachments have not been positive, caring, safe and secure and so when we come along offering to help, they feel insecure or suspect that that we will be ‘just be like everyone else’ (i.e. untrustworthy). In other words, we may need to ‘earn’ their trust.

So how can we build or earn that trust? A PIE approach would argue that this comes through the gradual building of a relationship with another person. Psychology research noted above highlights that this may be achieved through the importance of creating common ground, shared goals and being able to offer a secure and psychologically safe space. This means we need to be reliable, consistent and honest as well as adopting the usual Person Centred approaches (e.g. Rogers, 1967) that I have highlighted in previous blogs (e.g. empathic, non-judgemental and open). We might need to reflect on the current situation, and what this means to the individual based on their previous experiences and therefore their likely future expectations of our relationship, and adjust our approach to relationship building accordingly. Perhaps we can help another person to see the potential advantages of trusting us to support them rather than just their feared costs? For example, we might consider supporting them first to achieve their tangible goals such as sorting out benefits or housing, before we ask them to share more personal information about their situation or history.

The good news is that our AWM’s are modifiable throughout our lives, especially if our current and future experiences of relationships are more positive than those we have had in our past. We CAN learn to trust again, when we build a supportive relationship that allows us to feel safe and secure again, as this case example from Centrepoint illustrates (c.f. https://centrepoint.org.uk/youth-homelessness/real-stories/camerons-story/). However, it can take time and patience to rebuild trust, and often involves consideration of trauma informed approaches such as giving choice where possible, and ensuring we collaborate with and empower the other person in the relationship. As our PIEineers again so eloquently note ‘building relationships is like building a home. It takes time, work and dedication’.

For our keyworkers in our supported accommodation services, this can often mean hours of informal contacts, brief conversations and welcoming smiles or warmth as much as any formal key-work sessions or meetings with our homeless young people. PIE approaches would encourage this as valuable ‘pre-engagement’ (c.f. Levy, 2014: http://pielink.net/questions/pre-treatment/) even if it is not always easy to ‘define’, record or measure. For example, I remember drinking many ‘cups of tea’ and just ‘chatting’ with past clients in hostels or on the hospital wards before they would feel safe enough and willing to trust me in order to engage in any formal psychological therapy. Consequently, as trust is so key to all our social interactions and in building relationships with others, perhaps we can all take a moment to reflect on what we can do to create the conditions for more trusting relationships in both our professional as well as our personal lives?…