Should You Trust Less After Being Betrayed?

What a Harvard fraud case reveals about rebuilding trust in relationships.

Hey Riffers,

September has arrived with its usual brand of beautiful chaos. I'm juggling three kids' back-to-school schedules, a book deadline, and my day job… all while trying not to accidentally betray anyone in the process. (But I probably already have. Whoops.)

You'd think having an actual PhD in clinical psychology and a specialization in relationships would prevent most mistakes, but turns out that mastering relational life is not something anyone ever checks off their to-do list. Whether it's in our personal relationships or watching events unfold around us, trust feels both more precious and more fragile than ever. So you're in good company if you've ever wondered why you keep getting hurt by people you trusted.

A new book about a Harvard scandal offers some unexpectedly helpful lessons for our most important relationships.

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In 2012, a group of academics published a paper¹ demonstrating that signing at the beginning of a form led to greater honesty than signing at the end. The finding was strong, leading to excitement, policy changes, and growing esteem for the authors.

But then, in 2021 (cue the universe’s sense of humor), it came to light that this research on honesty rested on… fraudulent data.² The irony was not lost on anyone that those accused of fraud specialized in research on ethics and honesty.

Though the fraud remains the leading headline, renowned researcher Max Bazerman, one of the authors of this notorious 2012 "sign first" study, also reveals the less obvious but more poignant side of this study: the betrayal hurt just as much as the fraud.

In his new book, Inside an Academic Scandal: A Story of Fraud and Betrayal, out last week, Bazerman does something I see a lot of people who have felt betrayed do: play the relationship equivalent of fantasy football–endlessly second-guessing the lineup after the game is over. He questions whether he should have been more persistent when questions about the data arose early on; when it emerged that there was a randomization failure in the 2012 study, he should have insisted that the paper be retracted instead of going along with the majority vote of his co-authors; he should generally have been in greater touch with the data rather than trust his collaborators.

But here's what's interesting about Bazerman's self-flagellation: his very willingness to examine his role and own his mistakes is exactly what makes him trustworthy going forward. It's not the people who second-guess themselves that we need to worry about—it's the ones who double down, deflect, and deny. The people who say "I should have seen the red flags" or “I can’t stop wondering why I did that” are demonstrating the kind of moral awareness that actually warrants repairing the broken trust. That’s unlike those who insist they did nothing wrong or who are unwilling to reflect on how something harmful could have happened.

The real question isn't whether Bazerman deserves our trust going forward—his response suggests he does. The question is how the rest of us learn to navigate a world where some people will reflect and grow from their mistakes, while others will simply get better at concealment.

The Impossible Game We All Have to Keep Playing

When people behave in untrustworthy ways, it can feel like evidence that we need to hold on to perpetual skepticism (or downright cynicism). That having less trust in others and more confidence in our own intuition can prevent harm to self and others. But the truth is, we're all playing an impossible game.

Trust too little, and you become that person who checks their partner's phone and demands receipts for coffee purchases. Trust too much, and you end up, like Bazerman, wondering how you missed so many red flags. It's an impossible game, and yet, we need to keep playing.

As trust researcher Peter Kim writes:

In the absence of any trust, cooperation becomes almost impossible. We would spend all our time monitoring and trying to protect ourselves from others at the expense of everything else.

That is, trust has merits even if it does make us more vulnerable.

Ultimately, though, trusting others is necessary to function in community. It's necessary for us to have trust in our partners, our work collaborators, in our public institutions, and in science.

The problem, however, is that our trust will at times be broken in any long-term, close relationship we have.

In my therapy office, I see people wrestling with this painful balance constantly. It's the partner who bought the expensive gadget "as a surprise" which the other translates "without asking." The friend who shared the secret because they "didn't think the other friend would mind." The two colleagues who thought each was clear on what role the other wanted to take on in the project, yet when push came to shove, undermined each other.

But most betrayals aren't masterminded–they're just Tuesday.³

So, what do we do with this impossible game if we want to continue to play in a relational world?

The Secret to Not Getting Destroyed by Tuesday Betrayals

Our best option is to calibrate trust, rather than abandoning it entirely. And what calibrating trust looks like in practice may be surprising. Researchers find that being purely reciprocal–as in, aiming for "an eye for an eye"–creates more danger than it saves, whereas a "generous" tit for tat works better.

Being slightly more forgiving than feels fair in the moment allows us to not destroy relationships in the (many) instances when harms aren't intentional and gives our relationships a chance to survive on those days that our partner or friend didn't listen or show up in the way they really should have. It helps us remain friends with people we have a long history with, even if those people don't call us as much as we wish they would because they hate the phone. And it helps us prevent incorrect inferences about how generous others have been from causing us to behave in ways that are less generous than we'd like to be.

Trusting generously, but with an eye out for verifying that our safety isn’t at risk, allows us to better achieve a healthy balance. It’s a balance of trusting and discerning, and of being both willing to be vulnerable and wise about when to protect ourselves.

Trust wisely, forgive generously, and remember: most betrayals really are just Tuesday.

Found this useful? Like it or share it with someone who's also trying to master the impossible art of trusting humans.

1. Once the paper was exposed as being based on fraudulent data, it was retracted.

2. For those interested in going down the rabbit hole of this scandal (who would DO such a thing?!, I really recommend the Bazerman book, as well as checking out the original exposé from the incredible data science team who provided evidence that the research was based on fraudulent data.

3. Tuesday: the most emotionally dangerous day of the week. Mondays may get all the bad press, but Tuesday is where relationships go to die.