I was listening to the Freakonomics podcast the other day and the topic was that low levels of social trust is bad for a society, Interestingly but not surprisingly (for me anyway) Brazil ranked the lowest of all countries listed when it came to trust. Low trust levels can be seen on a day to day basis here, from boss' not trusting staff to handle money, to people being scared to go into certain neighbourhoods, corrupt cops, laptop repair guys stealing the components of your laptop only to then tell you they were 'unable to fix the problem', spouses constantly worried that their partner is cheating on them and the common belief that the government is robbing the population blind.
I'm often told that I'm too trusting and I need to stop trusting people so much if I'm to survive here. But the research shows if we all just trusted each other a little more we'd be better off.
Seems like the mistrust is a result of decades of cheating, scamming, thieving and corruption. I guess it's a bit of a 'chicken and egg' type situation.
Is there anything that we can do to change the trend and make Brazil a trusting and therefore more prosperous society?
Here is a link to some of the research quoted in the podcast if any is interested.
http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/un … ts-moving/
and a link to the podcast itself.
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/trust-me/#disqus_thread