A television commercial for the brokerage house Smith Barney warns that “[w]e are not born with an instinct to trust. Trust must be earned.” Performance may be the key to trusting a stockbroker, but it is not the answer to why we trust strangers more generally. We may not be born trusting, but our inclinations to place faith in others start very early in life. Erik Erikson (1963, 249) held that “the amount of trust derived from earliest infantile experience [depends] on the quality of the maternal relationship. Mothers create a sense of trust in their children.”

Smith Barney and Erikson are not at odds. They are talking about different types of trust. Confidence in your stockbroker is strategic trust, which is based on experience. New evidence may lead to different conclusions on who is trustworthy and who is not, including which brokerage firm ranks highest. Erikson's faith in others is generalized trust, which does not change readily. We develop trusting instincts early in life. Generalized trust stems from an optimistic view of the world that we initially learn from our parents. We are not likely to shift from trust to mistrust if we discover new information about any particular person, group, or even “most people.” Our life histories do shape our generalized trust, but are not the central determinants of it.