Trust has been characterized as a conscious choice, becoming vulnerable to another person, anchored in the confident belief that their intent and competence are reliable. Also, trust relies on integrity, strength, ability, surety of a person , to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you. This brief essay has to do with the lack of trust and paranoia of many Gen Zers .
The following troubling statistics , regarding trust, come from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and The Hill “Gen Z Rejects Trump Support and is Mid Term Motivated and Pew Research. Pertaining to Gen Z :1.They make up 21% of the population 2. Their voter turnout remains lower than other age groups 3. 31% supported Trump in the 2024 election and their GOP showing was the highest since 2008 4. Trump’s approval rating dropped from 94% to 69% in his first seven months 5. Prior to the 2024 election 27% strongly agreed that democracy was the best form of government, compared to 69% over the age of 58 6. Less than one third under the age of 30 trust the government 7. 16% believe that democracy is working well for young people .
Additional information pertaining to trust : 1 right-leaning influencers have 9 out of 10 most popular podcasts and shows 2. Gen Zers are getting information from their favorite influencers, favorite content creators and/or YouTube streaming 3. Many conservative youth leaders use highly inflammatory language involving Nazi-ism and racism. 4. Information received is driven by social media not traditional news outlets as they are absorbing narratives not consuming the news 5.Politics of equality don’t resonate with a lot of these males.
Further trust statistics: 1. 17% of Americans say they don’t trust the federal government in Washington 2. 66% of Republicans trust science 3. There’s been a big decline in trusting science associated with the Covid -19 pandemic 4. 23% of Republicans trust higher education 5. 26%. Republicans trust the current Trump administration 6. Globally, the United States placed 27th in trusting the rule of law .
Politically , Gen Zers complain but do not always vote . Second, a significant number of these types supported , voted for a man that made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first 4 years in office ; lied about the 2020 election results and provided inaccurate statistics on the economy ,inflation , and Constitution according to the Washington Post Fact Checker.
Perhaps, if these types read and received their news from reliable sources, and not from social media , they might've experienced cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, too few believe in democracy or trust the government but do support an authoritarian running government. Can there be any surprise that the government is not working for them ? Ignorance is not their bliss .
Psychologically , Erikson brilliantly described eight psychosocial developmental stages pertaining to personality development. His first stage described whether or not a baby was able to show and demonstrate social trust . This psychological issue is an important variable affecting well being . Did the baby experience ease in feeding, depth of sleep, relaxation of bowel movement or does that baby have to deal and be confronted with too much unpleasantness , anxiety ,irregularity , vulnerability and discomfort ?
Social trust has to do with familiarity ,anticipation and expectancy when experiencing anxiety , tension or threat . If physiological and psychological needs get gratified by the mother figure (reinforcement), that results in reduction of discomfort for the baby. With a positive ratio of primarily continuous reinforcement, anticipation and expectancies develop with that gratification .This allows the infant to become better able to balance the discomfort caused by its physiology. With successful reinforcement, that newborn develops a familiarity and with that results , on a continuum ,of a sense of inner goodness - a”good” mother .
With a negative ratio or absence of reinforcement, tension, anxiety and discomfort is not lessened and therefore negative anticipations, expectancies with familiarity become established and associated with that mother figure - a “bad “ mother . That baby has developed the ground floor or prototype for mistrust . The sense of mistrust begins with the mother figure and then generalizes to other mother figures .
Questions , just an example ,relating to that mother figure associated with feeding for developing a sense of trust or mistrust include the following : 1. The mother figures, age, character , psychological maturity and mental health 2. How much psychological energy and focus can be devoted to the baby when feeding without excessive worry, fear, distractions, obligations, other responsibilities , priorities or other needs ? 3. Was the bottle propped and/or does a relaxed or tensed ,insecure mother hold the child near
?. Comparative research by Harry Harlow demonstrated the importance of close and warm contact during feeding. 4. Was the feeding based on some rigid schedule or on demand ? 5. What’s the degree of love or fear associated with that mother figure?
The degree ,comfort , strength or love of mutuality that occurs between caretaker and baby affects the degree of developing that sense of trust or mistrust. If a sense of trust occurs , that outer predictability can and does generalize towards others and results in a positive familiarity between self and other human forms . If a sense of mistrust develops ,a different and negative tendency occurs .That occurrence makes it difficult to trust one’s ability in reducing tension, discomfort , frustration along with a tendency to limit and avoid forms of other humans for expectancies to reduce conflict .
The task of the caretaker is second to none and must be a priority. That parent must also have developed a sense of trust, to be able to guide with prohibition and permission and have a firm sense of what they are doing. Parents that have been deprived or have developed a sense of mistrust themselves present and reinforce that untrustworthiness, irregularity and inconsistency. This dynamic results in frustration, uneasiness, hate , fear and anger with the development of paranoia.
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The baby must be able to rely on the sameness and continuity of that caretaker which leads to the ability to trust oneself and be able to deal effectively with urges, deficits, frustrations, and so forth . If not, the newborn develops too much of an inner sense of anxiety, frustration, rejection , anger, fear and hate. In other words, there is an introjection , a taking in, based on that identification . Then , that negativity becomes projected onto others. And, all those troubling thoughts and feelings turn into negative implications, ramifications with toxic behavior . Paranoid thoughts then hold the infant captive throughout life.
Of course there’s a constant testing in that relationship .Are there going to be degrees of comfort or rage , initially with that provider and later generalizing with others ? Importantly, we are not talking about absolute quantities of food or demonstration of love, but rather the quality of that mutuality within the relationship. The importance of personal trustworthiness ,being all right with oneself and others becomes an important psychological task.
Having developed a sense of mistrust, because of inadequate , irregular or multiple caretakers, that individual is additionally faced, during a lifetime, with fragmentary or incomplete information about reality at the best and then consequently makes assumptions that are influenced by one’s feeling and thinking.
Feelings and thinking are reciprocally related . With that sense of mistrust , that individual becomes unable to think , reason and procure information in an objective , cogent and rational manner .Essentially, an inordinate amount of internalized thinking and feelings of fear ,anxiety , desire and hate Influence both perception and cognition resulting in cognitive unsoundness and irrationality.
To Be Continued
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