The loss of trust
GEORGE KENNAN, the foreign policy expert and writer who died in March at age 101, may well have been the last American trustee. I define trustee as a person who is well-known, widely respected, and judged to be disinterested -- that is, not pushing a party line, calling things as he sees them, having the courage of his convictions. The acid test is whether the trustee is willing to resign on principle -- an act few American officials have been willing to do since Kennan's time.
I was fascinated to learn that neuroscientists have recently made two discoveries about trust. In one laboratory in Houston, scientists identified a brain structure -- ''the caudate nucleus," which is activated as game players develop trust in their opponents.
Two other laboratories -- one in Switzerland, one in the United States -- have discovered that the hormone oxytocin makes humans more willing to bond with one another.
From the pioneering work of the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson we know that the ability of an infant to trust another being forms the basis of later virtues, like initiative and a sense of identity; the lack of trust, in turn, predicts shame, guilt, and an uncertain sense of self.
Perhaps, if we looked into the brains or endocrine systems of developing children, we could observe a sense of trust or mistrust as it unfolds. But does trust in the individual, in the Eriksonian sense, have much to do with trust in the broader society? Considerable caution is in order before drawing such a conclusion. The extent of trust in a society depends on many complex factors, ranging from the integrity of leaders to the power and accuracy of the media, to the feeling on the part of citizens that laws and regulations are fair.
A small study I conducted with Jessica Sara Benjamin, an undergraduate student at Harvard, involving individuals drawn from different social strata confirms that trust and trustees are on the wane in American society.
Respondents blamed the media for the decline in trust, even as they mentioned media figures such as Tom Brokaw and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as the people they most trusted, a striking tribute to the power of the media. Other figures included Alan Greenspan, the trustee with a narrow mandate; Oprah Winfrey, whose trusteeship could not have been envisaged in Kennan's era; and Jon Stewart, a comedian whose dissection of the news on the Comedy Central cable TV network is particularly popular with young people.
I would be surprised if the caudate nuclei of our more trusting subjects differed from those of our less trusting ones, or if more oxytocin is released when Stewart appears on television. Put directly, whether we trust a friend to come to our aid or a bridge player not to cheat operates on a totally different scale from whether we have trust in our leaders and our institutions.
In the former case, we get regular and reliable cues that reinforce or undercut the strength of a relationship. In the latter case, we have to be able to sift through a deluge of current and historical information, much of it unreliable, see through spin-masters and opinion leaders who try to alter our own perceptions, and hope against hope that our conclusions are based more on evidence than on faith.
Living in an institution or society where trust is in short supply is a dispiriting experience. While recognizing the limitations of the ''wise men" and ''the guardians," a society benefits when there are individuals in whom most citizens place their trust.
At a minimum, re-establishing trust requires leaders who are literally trustworthy (imagine the impact if Colin Powell had resigned on principle); media that strive to be accurate rather than sensational; and regulations that are fair to those with modest means.
Exercising the caudate nucleus or exuding oxytocin is unlikely to do the trick.
Howard Gardner is Hobbs Professor of Education and Cognition at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 
