What has happened to our trust of others? In the Index, trust is measured in three ways – with questions as to whether people are viewed as “honest,” as “helpful” and “can be trusted.” Over the last 30 years, social trust has steadily declined.

The exact reasons for the loss of trust are not fully understood, but what is clear is that as individuals and as communities, we pay a high personal cost for these declines. Our democracy, economy and society rely on our ability to trust others in order to facilitate basic everyday interactions. Unfortunately, over the past three decades there has been a sharp decline in the levels of trust in others, a key component of “social capital.” (“Social capital” means the resources, such as relations and networks, that groups can use to solve common problems.10)

Trust facilitates the ease with which we conduct the daily work of democracy – person-to-person, citizen-to-citizen transactions and collaboration. Without trust it is difficult for members of a community to get together and solve pressing community problems. On an even more basic level, without a strong sentiment of trust, interactions with strangers on a daily basis can be tense and uneasy.

Having less trust also increases “transaction costs” – the costs associated with market interactions – and makes business less efficient and more expensive. It is the reason that more and more businesses now insist on “getting it in writing.” Conversely, working with others to address common problems may increase trust, thereby facilitating further collaboration.

Some have argued that trust is important to our public health. For example, life expectancy is significantly higher in trustful communities.11 And trust can make high-stakes operations in our democracy (elections and transitions of political power) run more smoothly and peacefully. As political scientists J.L. Sullivan and J.E. Transue note “When people do not trust their fellow citizens, elections and transitions of power appear to be far more dangerous. Citizens may fear that losing an election will mean losing all access to political power... Conversely, when people trust their fellow citizens in general, the stakes do not seem to be so high.”

Expanding on his ideas, Robert Putnam wrote, “People who trust others are all-round good citizens, and those more engaged in community life are both more trusting and more trustworthy. Conversely, the civically disengaged believe themselves to be surrounded by miscreants and feel less constrained to be honest themselves.” Putnam argues that social trust is important because it “lubricates the inevitable frictions of social life.”

While trust in other human beings facilitates cooperation among citizens, one silver lining of distrust is that it can motivate engagement in politics, as people mobilize to defeat other groups or to check major institutions that they distrust. There have been times of high average trust and frequent political participation, such as the 1950s. But since the mid-1990s, we seem to have moved to an era of low trust, rising political participation and partisan animosity.