Modern societies, institutions need to work more on building a culture

Modern societies and institutions need to work more on building a culture of trust, Oxford University Professor Rachel Botsman told a lecture hosted by the Majlis of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, entitled "The New Truths about Trust" on Wednesday.

"Trust can’t be measured, it’s a process, a result," she said. "We need to build more trustworthiness." She pointed out that trustworthiness can be built through traits such as competent, reliability and benevolence.

In the lecture, Dr. Botsman, who is a globally renowned expert on collaboration and trust, spoke about the importance of building trust in societies and institutions, noting that the world has witnessed a change in the perception of trust as a result of the technology and the internet revolution.

"Technology is accelerating the number of things that we need to trust," she said, adding that one of the threats that modern societies are facing as a result of the increasing platforms that people need to trust is "misinformation". She pointed out that an antidote for this problem is that people need to take time before they take a decision based on automatic trust of technology.

She said that recent history taught people around the world not to trust institutions, giving an example of the Global Financial Crisis, which resulted in the arrest of a single major figure, which made many people distrustful of financial institutions. "So, it’s really important that those who breach trust are held accountable," she said, adding that "experts in the public sphere made a lot of mistakes in the last decade" which contributed to reducing people’s trust in public figures and institutions.

She said although there is a perception that people’s trust in institutions, experts and traditional sources of authority has diminished in modern times, not as a result of increased situations that lead to distrust but rather because of technology. "Now people make a mistake and it becomes viral" as a result of the internet, she said. "Institutional trust wasn’t designed for this age. I don’t think institutional trust is in a crisis."

"Trust is moving sideways to machines and individuals. A new form of trust is rising up. It’s a distributed trust," she said, adding that this type of trust was made possible by new technologies that where possible by the internet and widespread dissemination of handheld smartphones. In that regard, she give a number of examples representing changing attitude towards trust pioneered by now-major companies such as AirBNB, Uber and e-Bay. "AirBNB made us to a trust leap," she said, explaining that a trust leap is a situation where people take a decision that would have not taken before such as deciding to make an online payment for the first time. "Trust leap helps societies move forward," she said.