Objective information including income, age, gender, and a variety of other characteristics has been seen to have little or no correlation to social trust, but subjective measures, such as perceived career success and general happiness, are correlated. Values instilled in childhood are not as strongly correlated as adult experiences, which makes increasing trust more hopeful. Again, people cannot be commanded to be happy. But smaller groups like companies and schools can work on what Offe cynically terms a “dramaturgy of pseudo-familiarity,” such as shared meals and the use of first names. If not too contrived, these activities can build a sense of community. Along this line, some features of modernization, such as instantaneous communication, could facilitate communication among groups, and modernization might instill general feelings of progress, accomplishment, and worth that serve to bond the country.

Institutions should not be used to substitute for trust (this is inefficient, raises costs, and is in many cases impossible), but rather to make trust a rational choice more often by decreasing the negative payoff of a betrayal for the truster and increasing it for the trustee. Simply knowing that the court system exists, that there are laws in place to protect rights of all kinds, and that lying and cheating are deemed unacceptable by society makes potential trusters more confident. Institutions must be understood by the populace. Bo Rothstein of Göteborg University in Sweden has explored collective action dilemmas with institutions, and I have modified one of his examples here for brevity. If a person who wants to pay her taxes honestly believes that nobody else will do the same, she will not pay taxes either because her taxes would provide no benefit to society—one person’s taxes are not enough to finance a public good. If everyone thinks this, no taxes will be paid even though most people are willing to pay them; a lack of trust hurts everyone. Simply increasing fines or prison sentences for cheating is insufficient, since the authorities might not be trusted either and could be seen as corrupt. Therefore, it is the perception that institutions are effective and honest (i.e., the police will catch tax evaders, and tax revenue will not be embezzled) that allows an individual to trust someone else, and institutions can work on this perception.

Societies wishing to increase their levels of social trust must work at both bottom-up (individual) and top-down (institutional/societal) levels. They must realize that biases, cultural history, group associations, moral values, societal norms, and subjective emotions all have strong influences on social trust which commonly result in inefficient equilibriums that make groups of people less trusting. More detailed and better-designed comparative research should be undertaken to further explore social trust and evaluate attempts to improve it. Increasing social trust is a worthwhile and important goal that provides benefits to all people in a society in multiple areas of their lives, and it should be brought to the forefront of the priorities of any governmental or nongovernmental group. As new governments struggle to earn legitimacy and popular support in countries such as Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and Ukraine, they must consider how they will stimulate increased trust among their populaces.