Submitted by Sabina Hitchen on | 0 Comments
Okay... I'm going to start this blog entry with a confession: I am not always a "jump and the net will appear" kind of person. Sometimes before I jump I want to know not only that the net is there, but what color it is, how it will be positioned, if it has been tested and what the back-up net looks like. Don't get me wrong, both businesses I am a part of have involved great risk and a lot of blind leaping from time to time, and my occasional need for a net/back-up net hasn't meant that I don't think and dream big for my businesses and brands on a daily basis, but it does mean that at times I get nervous, and hesitate before jumping in.
I was thinking and meditating about this over the past week, when I ran across an article in Psychology Today entitled Gotta Have Faith which discussed the high price of mistrust. In it the reporter discussed research out of Italy regarding the danger of "overcorrecting our confidence". In a nutshell, they studied people from 26 European countries and compared the household income to survey respondents level of trust in others (measured zero to ten). Here's an interesting find:
"The most trusting, at ten, earned 7.3% less than the eights did. They're apparently easy targets for scams and bad bargains. But the MOST skepitcal, at zero, earned 14.5% less - a disadvantage equivalent to not going to college." As the researchers and magazine went on to discuss, "by looking askance at the world, they miss opportune investments."
Writer Matthew Hutson goes on to discuss how mistrust also has a larger social costs. I love what the lead researcher says about this and wanted to share it with you here: "Consider a penniless inventor and a wealthy potential investor. If they don't come together, they both lose out, and so does anyone who might use the invention or buy the resulting company's stock. Trust increases the size of the pie".
Love that! Here's to healthy levels of trust and bigger pies!
