trust

While visiting Copenhagen, she asked a local man how one finds parking. The man explained the process: write the time of arrival on a sheet of paper, place it against the window facing outwards, and that way the the attendant will know that you haven't overstayed your allotted time.

"But what if I just write a time later than when I arrived?" she wondered aloud.

The man's expression soured. "We don't... do that here," he finally responded after a pause.

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People who grow up in high-trust societies often take for granted the remarkable impact trust has on everything from the ability to perform mundane activities to the capacity to build multi-generational institutions. When you live in a place where buses arrive on time, people return their shopping carts, and ATMs always allow you to withdraw your money, it becomes easy to assume that this is just "the way things are," rather than the culmination of centuries of hard work and sacrifice from thousands of individuals collaborating to build a better future for their childrens' children. When you grow up in a Hobbesian world where everybody seems to equate success with outrunning the other camper, not the bear, it's impossible to build anything of lasting value. Shopping carts have to be chained up and rented for a fee, banks need to hire armed guards, and most people are preoccupied with mere survival.

Cultural attitudes towards social norms have a profound impact on whether a society develops trust. Over time, norms that inform and regulate social behavior follow a trajectory whereby prosocial norms are codified while others fall by the wayside. A culture that devalues or even actively subverts prosocial norms, given a large enough time frame, will eventually disintegrate.