Trusting people is not a yes/no decision
Trusting people is not a yes / no decision. The real decision is about over what or in what ways do you trust a particular person. There is, it seems, a predisposition to take evidence one particular strength/ quality/ behaviour you recognise in an individual and assume that that individual will excel on a whole variety of different strengths and qualities. The psychologist, Edward Thorndike, first noticed this in the 1920’s and called it the ‘Halo Effect’. The ‘Horns’ or ‘Devil’ effect is the exact opposite. e.g. when we don’t trust someone in or with anything by extrapolating from a particular instance to general proposition.
Mike Apter proposed a variant of this which he calls ‘Chronotyping’ – making a judgement about an individual based upon one instance or one particular circumstance and therefore not recognising that in different circumstances the evidence for the existence or particular strength or quality might be very different.
The problem for leaders who think like this is that these decisions trust / don’t trust; rate / don’t rate; become self-fulfilling in the sense that we become biased to see people in particular ways, like poor scientists seeking evidence that confirms rather disconfirms our theory.
Perhaps as New Years resolution it might be useful to introduce some ‘benefit of the doubt’ for those we count on but don’t trust, and look for evidence that qualifies our judgement?
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