Well, the Harvard Business Review has a slightly different answer to the question of  how to build trust. In an article entitled, “The Simplest Way to Build Trust” by David DeSteno (posted June 2, 2014), the author states that the simplest way to do this,

“…is to employ one of the mind’s most basic mechanisms for determining loyalty: the perception of similarity. If you can make someone feel a link with you, his empathy and willingness to cooperate with you will increase.”  (Id. at 1.)

 As an example, he refers to an incident occurring during World War I in Ypres, Belgium on December 24, 1914:

“…The British and the Germans had been fighting a long and bloody battle… [T]he British soldiers began to see lights and hear songs from across the field that separated their trenches from those of their foes. They soon recognized that the lights were candles and the songs were Christmas carols. What happened next was rather amazing. The men from both sides came out of their trenches and began to celebrate Christmas together. Men who had hours before been trying to kill each other were now sharing trinkets and family photos in complete trust that no violence would occur. …” (Id.)

The author speculates that the reason was “similarity.”. Suddenly, the men from  both sides saw themselves as fellow Christians, not as enemies. (Id.)

And, indeed, an experiment bore this out. Participants were asked to put on earphones across from another person who was an actor. The participants were asked to keep the beat to the music they heard through the earphones. In some cases, the actor also kept the beat which the participants could see. In other cases, the actor would randomly tap, not keeping any sort of beat.

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