I have come across three discussions about trust this week.
They just jumped out at me!
1. All of the guests on Phillip Adams’ review of the year spoke about trust. I thought their discussion of geo-politics and economics was fascinating. If you do listen to the podcast, Bea Campbell provides a great perspective on Occupy London. Her commentary led me to look at the St Paul’s Institute’s report on Value and Values: Perceptions of Ethics in the City Today.
2. I have been reading John Dickson’s Humiltas and have thought a great deal about the trust we invest in leaders and how each of us as a leader can build trust. (I happened upon Bret Simmons discussion of trust too.)
3. This morning my wife, Sue, alerted me to a great post. Sue is a wonderful fossicker of stories. The ABC online reports on Babies learn who to trust at early age. The report notes:
Infants normally mimic sounds, facial expressions and actions they observe but researchers at Concordia University in Montreal found that if an adult tricks them, they will no longer follow along with that person.
The findings published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development bolster previous evidence that infants can differentiate between credible and un-credible sources, the study says.
The Concordia study was published online earlier this year (25 February). The authors are Diane Poulin-Dubois, Ivy Brooker and Alexandra Polonia. The abstract is:
Research has shown that preschoolers prefer to learn from individuals who are a reliable source of information. The current study examined whether the past reliability of a person’s emotional signals influences infants’ willingness to imitate that person. An emotional referencing task was first administered to infants in order to demonstrate the experimenter’s credibility or lack thereof. Next, infants in both conditions watched as the same experimenter turned on a touch light using her forehead. Infants were then given the opportunity to reproduce this novel action. As expected, infants in the unreliable condition developed the expectation that the person’s emotional cues were misleading. Thus, these infants were subsequently more likely to use their hands than their foreheads when attempting to turn on the light. In contrast, infants in the reliable group were more likely to imitate the experimenter’s action using their foreheads. These results suggest that the reliability of the model influences infants’ imitation.
Photo Credit
St Paul’s Cathedral
