If a distressed stranger knocked on your door asking to use your phone, would you oblige? How about lending them a fiver for the bus, if they assured you they'd return and pay you back? In today's fractured world, trust seems elusive and divisions run deep. A lot of people find it hard to trust strangers, perhaps in particular those who are different to us. But why? A recent breakthrough by our international team of researchers, , has shed light on the genetic basis of .
We discovered that our ability to trust strangers may be more than just a social or psychological trait—it could be rooted in our DNA. This is important, as it turns out that trusting people might actually compared to their more skeptical counterparts. Research has shown that those who trust strangers have a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease, even after accounting for factors such as smoking, age and biological sex.
Yet understanding why this is the case remains elusive. For decades, the study of trust has been the domain of social and political sciences, viewed primarily as a societal construct. Two main theories have emerged to explain why some people are more trusting than others.
One suggests that trust is a stable trait . The other posits that it's influenced by a person's . I can easily imagine that the answer to the standard social trust question: "Would you say that most people can be trusted, or you can't be too careful when dealing with people?" would depend on whether you had bee.