TrustLAB Translates - Does Trust Make Us Gullible? Why Trusting People Are Not More Likely to Believe Misinformation
Introduction
Whether we are reading news headlines, listening to colleagues, or evaluating claims on social media, every day, we are required to make quick judgments about what is true and what is not. Often, these judgments must be made with limited information and with feelings of uncertainty. A widely held belief suggests that trusting people are more gullible, while skeptical individuals are better at spotting falsehoods. But is this assumption actually correct?
In our research, we set out to test this intuition. Specifically, we examined whether people who generally trust others - those high in trust propensity or social trust - are more likely to judge statements as true. This question matters because trust plays a central role in social and organizational life, influencing cooperation, leadership, and decision-making. If trust truly biases truth judgments, it could have far-reaching implications for how people process information in everyday and high-stakes contexts.
Across three studies, we found a surprising answer: trusting individuals are not more likely to believe statements are true. Even in socially rich or high-stakes situations, trust does not appear to make people more gullible.
Methodology
To examine the link between trust and truth judgments, we conducted three preregistered studies with a total sample of 679 participants across different social contexts.
Participants first completed validated measures of:
- Trust propensity (a person’s general willingness to trust others), and
- Social trust (beliefs about the trustworthiness of people in general).
They then evaluated ambiguous statements and indicated whether they believed these statements were true or false. Crucially, we varied the context in which these judgments were made:
- Context-free judgments: Statements presented without any source information, e.g., a headline encountered without seeing its origin or source.
- Social judgments: Statements attributed to other people, emphasizing interpersonal trust, e.g., reading a comment from an unknown user.
- High-stakes judgments: A simulated courtroom setting where participants acted as jurors evaluating witness testimony.
This design allowed us to test whether trust matters more when decisions become more social or consequential.
Key Insights from the Study
Our findings challenge common assumptions about trust and gullibility:
Trust Does Not Increase Belief in Truth. Across all three studies, neither trust propensity nor social trust predicted whether participants judged statements as true. Trusting people were no more likely to believe ambiguous claims that were shared with them than more skeptical individuals.
Even High-Stakes Contexts Don’t Change the Pattern. Introducing social cues or placing participants in a simulated courtroom scenario - where truth judgments might feel more important - did not activate trust-based biases. Even when evaluating potential lies under legal framing, trust remained unrelated to how likely people were to believe what they heard.
Trust and Beliefs About Lying Are Related - But Still Don’t Drive Judgments. People who trust others tend to believe that lying is less common in general. However, these beliefs did not translate into different truth judgments when evaluating specific statements or facts.
Cognitive Processes Trump Personality Traits. The results suggest that people judge whether something is true less based on stable personality traits, such as how trusting they are, and more on how information feels when it is processed. This includes how familiar the topic is, how easy a statement is to understand (for example, clear language and simple grammar), and how well it fits with what people already believe.
Why This Matters
These findings refine our understanding of the role of trust in decision-making and provide insight into what does (or doesn’t!) make us gullible. Trust is essential for cooperation and social functioning - but it does not appear to distort people’s ability to distinguish between truth and misinformation.
This challenges the widespread narrative that trust inevitably comes with naïveté. Instead, trust and skepticism seem to operate independently from the cognitive processes that guide truth judgments.
For organizations, policymakers, and educators, the implication is clear: Trusting individuals are not inherently less critical or more easily misled and societal challenges with misinformation cannot be tackled by trying to make people more suspicious of others.
Read the full paper here:
Bertram, A.-M., Lalot, F., van der Werff, L., & Greifeneder, R. (2025). Distrusting minds, skeptical judgments? No evidence for a trust–truth link. Frontiers in Psychology
Authors:
Anna-Marie Bertram (University of Basel)