Findings: Qualitative Data: Trust

Trust is a basic human emotion. Trust issues are always present, in situations as different as between people in a relationship and between people and their government. In terms of communication, trust is very important. In order for a particular communication message to be effective, especially in the absence of any way to evaluate the message, trust in the source of the message is essential.

“You’d never want just one person to come in and say, ‘Okay, now you can drink it again, because everyone would [say], ‘Okay, you drink it first!’”

The concept of trust came up again and again in the focus groups, and was also a major issue in the interviews conducted with Pascoag residents in the ES 126 study. The broader theme of trust, especially trust between a contaminated community and officials, can be broken down into the themes of establishing trust, losing trust, evaluating trustworthiness, and trust as compared with competence.

One aspect of community response that the hypothetical situation used in the focus groups could not delve into too deeply was the way in which contaminated communities transfer their focus from the risk to the way in which they are treated by those responding to the risk. This transfer was very evident in Pascoag, and was heard in the interviews conducted in the ES 126 study. The communication example in the moderator's guide dealing with sample dialogue from a community meeting did provoke some comments showing this theme: [when asked how they would respond after hearing comments by officials at the meeting]

• "I think people would get quite angry. . . it's almost like they're stonewalling you."
• "The most important thing is that you feel like you're taken seriously."

Establishing trust
Before a contamination event, some level of trust exists between individuals in a community and officials. It might be a lot of trust, or hardly any at all, but either way this level is a baseline based on previous interactions between the parties, the reputations of the parties, other relevant outside experiences and many other factors. Experience matters—for both individuals and for communities.

Trust in government is a fairly precious commodity. In the United States, this trust among the people, as measured by data from the National Election Survey, was fairly high. . .until 1972. According to Robert Wuthnow, a professor of political science at Princeton University, “National Election Survey questions about trust in people show abrupt declines during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Vietnam war and Watergate were raising public concern about national leaders. Other surveys conducted in those years show that large numbers actually believed their trust had been shaken by Watergate.” (22). While trust is a difficult concept to measure, other measurements, including additional surveys, data sets from community involvement, and measures of social capital all show decreasing levels of trust in both government and in other people (25).

At the beginning of a water contamination event, then, there is a baseline level of trust in government for each individual and for the community as a whole. While it is difficult to say exactly what these levels are based on, they did come through, on a relative scale in respondents’ comments about officials. One respondent, a man who is involved with a local marina association, showed a fair amount of trust in the water department in terms of preventing a contamination. “The water department is as sophisticated as anything in the state. . .as far as testing, and controls, and upkeep, they have a pretty big budget. . . they do their due diligence to make sure that[a water contamination event] doesn’t happen, obviously.” Not all respondents were so trusting; a woman who has filtered all her drinking and cooking water for many years commented, “I don’t think the standards for public drinking water are very high in the US.” From the outset, intrinsic trust levels matter.

Focus group participants discussed at great length the water quality standards in the United States, and how these standards are politically determined. Regardless of the truth about these standards, this lack of faith and cynicism about them shows a basic distrust of the government in its public health missions. One respondent discussed how “the preponderance of pressure in a political system is in favor of resolving it as quickly as possible, which doesn’t necessarily mean erring on the side of caution.” Ascribing a political motivation to actions, seeing this motivation as more important than public health in the minds of officials, demonstrates this lack of trust.

Another resident matter-of-factly spoke of this lack. “I think I have a basic distrust until they can convince me that they’re correct,” referring to information about contamination and health risks. This guilty until proven innocent mentality has serious consequences for officials attempting to communicate an important message.

Moving into the water contamination event, then, these trust levels help determine how the event, officials, and their actions will be received. For a community with a low level of trust, such as a community which has previously suffered a toxic event or a community with a polluting facility that was fought against by the community initially, officials are going in to the community already behind. Gaining, or regaining, trust is an uphill battle.

Losing trust
Common sense and life experience teaches us that losing trust, as compared with gaining trust, is fairly easy. For a community facing a contamination, it takes relatively few actions, or inactions, on the part of officials or agencies to lose their appearance of trustworthiness to the community. From the baseline level of trust going into the hypothetical water contamination situation in the focus groups, responses to the materials given to the Pascoag residents during the MTBE contamination showed that with each additional communication or piece of information from officials, trust levels decreased.

Comments after hearing each new communication piece showed these declining trust levels. Each piece provided additional information, each time from a slightly different source, All the information was accurate and was the information presented to residents in Pascoag. Hearing about different standards, either federal or state, brought out concerns about contradictory standards, which made participants less likely to trust the standards, and jointly the creators of such standards. After hearing the information from the health fact sheet, a participant who had previously been fairly calm about the “contamination” and indicated that she would get all her information from the local news said, “That would be a very strange announcement, because on the one hand they’re saying don’t drink the water, and then on the other hand, they’re just basically saying we don’t agree with the federal guidelines.” This appearance of contradiction inspired a loss of trust among participants, in standards and in officials overall. The newspaper story [link] caused an even further erosion of trust, and also drew comments that now the situation was “scarier” than before. It is in precisely a “scary” situation that residents want to trust officials, so this finding is especially sobering.

Evaluating trustworthiness
With the variety of information and forms of information available, it’s important to have a way to evaluate the trustworthiness of information. This, of course, is a complicated concept. Since trust is so completely based on context and past experiences, evaluation of sources without having prior contact is necessarily based on fairly surface-level observations. A good example of these problems can be found in attempting to evaluate the trustworthiness of information obtained from the Internet. A number of participants indicated that if they were unsatisfied with the information presented to them, they would turn to Internet sources to find out more. When questioned, though, they seemed unsure how to decide whether to trust the information they would find. One said, “There’s probably a thousand different reports; everybody’s got conflicting information. Not that what you’d find on the web would be any less conflicting that what’s out there, but you might be able to get a better idea of the true consequences of drinking MTBE or whatever.” This idea of finding the “true” consequences seems connected to other trust issues; if individuals trust government less they may intrinsically trust what they themselves are able to discover more, and if they trust government more they might trust Internet-based information less. A basic distrust of government could lead to a basic distrust of government information, and so a basic willingness to trust information personally discovered. When viewed in light of the ease of posting information to the Internet and the difficulty in evaluating this information, this has important consequences for governmental providers of information.

Deciding how to evaluate trustworthiness was very connected to how participants viewed the role of scientists and professionals in the situation. One participant, responding to another who had indicated the perennial need for greater information, reacted, “While it’d be great to have this information in the back of your head, you can’t know how the trains work, or . . .you just can’t be in control of everything. . . while you take it for granted, you gotta trust the people who do it for a living.” He kept on this point, commenting later that “at some point you’ve got to trust the people you hire.” Among other participants as well there was a sense that scientists should be experts with answers. One participant really wanted to hear from “an expert in evaluating the data,” and another suggested calling up Mobil Oil, since they created MTBE and should know what the stuff does regarding health effects.

There was a sense that experts are to be trusted; problems arose when discussing different experts with different opinions. Participants accepted the inevitability of dueling opinions, and some said that they would want a variety of opinions to listen to, including experts who would disagree with the official experts. There was a sense that one of the experts, in the end, would be believed. When asked how she would respond if an expert indicated a particular finding in a public meeting, one participant said, “But somebody else there wouldn’t say that.” Somewhere, there’s an expert who has the answer. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

Trust/Competence
It’s important to note that when people discuss trust, they often do so in terms of competence. Trust can be about many things, about beliefs about honesty, dependability, and fairness, but it is often confused with discussion about ability. Different individuals will base their levels of trust on these different beliefs and values.

In the focus groups, participants discussed trust in terms of competence as well as in other contexts. One woman expressed trust in the federal standards, but said, “But what kind of clowns are working at Providence Water? Do they know what they’re doing?” She added, half-jokingly but to general hilarity, “Is this someone Cianci appointed or. . .?” referring to the many patronage jobs doled out by the last mayor, convicted felon Vincent A. Cianci, Jr., to less-than qualified candidates. In this sense, perception of incompetence translated into lack of trust. Another, discussing what to do if officials didn’t have the answers he was looking for, felt that an admission of ignorance can be pretty refreshing, but that the officials then needed to go one step farther and say that he or she would try to get the answer. Admitting not having the answer was seen as a marker of honesty, but the competence requirement for trust meant that the official needed to then go and get the answer.

Another respondent, when queried as to whether he would trust a certain piece of information, replied, “No. . that would be one of my first thoughts, is that I want to investigate this. Who are these people and how could they let this happen?” These respondents weren’t concerned so much about honesty or fairness as much as about ability.

Establishing Trust

Losing Trust

Evaluating Trustworthiness

Trust vs. Competence

“You’d never want just one person to come in and say, ‘Okay, now you can drink it again, because everyone would [say], ‘Okay, you drink it first!’”

“The water department is as sophisticated as anything in the state. . .as far as testing, and controls, and upkeep, they have a pretty big budget. . . they do their due diligence to make sure that[a water contamination event] doesn’t happen, obviously.”

“I don’t think the standards for public drinking water are very high in the US.”

“The preponderance of pressure in a political system is in favor of resolving it as quickly as possible, which doesn’t necessarily mean erring on the side of caution.”

“I think I have a basic distrust until they can convince me that they’re correct.”

“That would be a very strange announcement, because on the one hand they’re saying don’t drink the water, and then on the other hand, they’re just basically saying we don’t agree with the federal guidelines.”

“There’s probably a thousand different reports; everybody’s got conflicting information. Not that what you’d find on the web would be any less conflicting that what’s out there, but you might be able to get a better idea of the true consequences of drinking MTBE or whatever.”

“While it’d be great to have this information in the back of your head, you can’t know how the trains work, or . . .you just can’t be in control of everything. . . while you take it for granted, you gotta trust the people who do it for a living.”

“That would be one of my first thoughts, is that I want to investigate this. Who are these people and how could they let this happen?”