It is trust that makes us human.

In 2002, using the brain scanning technique known as functional MRI, James Rilling, of Emory University, Georgia, showed that when people trust each other they engage particular parts of the brain, the “trust centres”.

In his paper in the journal Neuron, which he entitled “A Neural Basis for Social Cooperation”, Rilling showed that the brain’s trust centres are located in the recently evolved parts, the parts that define us as higher primates. It is trust that makes us human.

It's an intriguing thought, and it runs parallel to Adam Smith's discovery that 'sympathy,' our propensity to empathize with our fellow men and women, is a natural human characteristic. Atomistic individualism sometimes seeks to establish the clear principles which should govern a person's relationships with the rest of society. But it is possible that there might be propensities to be taken into account as well as abstract principles. These propensities might indeed include an ability to empathize, and an ability to establish relationships of trust on the basis of signals rather than through overt collusion. Humans, as social animals, might need more than intellectual analysis to explain their condition.

source: www.adamsmith.org/blog