A review involving over 2.5 million people links one social outlook to greater happiness—and the connection runs both ways.
Trusting others is linked to greater happiness and life satisfaction, a review involving over 2.5 million people finds.
Happier people also tend to become more trusting over time.
The link between trust and happiness is slightly stronger in children, adolescents and older adults, possibly because supportive relationships are especially important at these ages.
Trust may help meet the need to belong by making it easier to build relationships in which people feel supported and secure.
Trust across the lifespan
The research combined almost 1,000 findings from studies involving people aged six to 84.
The analysis examined how trust related to everyday emotions, including happiness and sadness, as well as people’s overall satisfaction with their lives.
Greater trust was consistently associated with better wellbeing.
The association was somewhat stronger among children and adolescents than among young and middle-aged adults, and stronger among older adults than young adults.
Trust may matter more at ages when people are building close relationships or becoming more dependent on others.
For younger people, learning whom to trust is part of building meaningful friendships and supportive social networks.
In later life, people may prioritise a smaller circle of close relationships and depend more on others for support.
Three kinds of trust
The researchers distinguished between trust in familiar people, trust in people generally and trust in institutions.
The first involves confidence in someone known personally, such as a partner, friend or relative.
General trust involves expectations about people more broadly, including strangers, while institutional trust concerns organisations such as governments, banks and the police.
All three were associated with better wellbeing, but trust in familiar people showed the strongest connection.
Security and belonging
Trust may support wellbeing partly because close relationships require a willingness to be vulnerable.
Expecting someone to respond with care can make it easier to seek help, cooperate and maintain a supportive connection.
These relationships may satisfy the basic psychological need to feel connected to others and cared for in return.
Trust could also provide a broader sense of security and predictability, making the social world feel more dependable.
This may help explain why trust was slightly more closely related to overall life satisfaction than to positive or negative emotions.
Life satisfaction reflects a broader assessment of how life is going, whereas emotions can fluctuate with immediate experiences.
Happiness can build trust
The relationship also worked in the other direction, with greater wellbeing predicting more trust later.
One proposed explanation is that emotions influence how people interpret the world around them.
Feeling happy may encourage more positive perceptions of other people, while anxiety may draw attention towards threats and uncertainty.
Trust and wellbeing could therefore reinforce each other, with supportive expectations helping people feel better and positive feelings making trust easier.
Trust must be earned
The wider social environment mattered too, with a stronger connection between trust and wellbeing in countries where people were generally more trusting.
A trusting outlook may be more beneficial when the people around us are dependable.
Simply encouraging someone to trust more overlooks the behaviour of the people and institutions receiving that trust.
Professor Catrin Finkenauer, study co-author, said:
“But trust can’t be forced—it has to be earned.”
The findings therefore highlight the importance of honesty, reliability, transparency and fair treatment in relationships and institutions.
Professor Finkenauer said:
“When we build trust, we also support mental health and stronger communities.”
Related
The study was published in the journal Psychological Bulletin (Bi et al., 2025).
