Trust is the chicken soup of social life. It brings us all sorts of good things, from a willingness to get involved in our communities to higher rates of economic growth and, ultimately, to satisfaction with government performance (Putnam 1993, 1995a; Fukayama 1995; Knack and Keefer 1997), to making daily life more pleasant. Yet, like chicken soup, it appears to work somewhat mysteriously. It might seem that we can only develop trust in people we know. Yet, trust's benefits come when we put faith in strangers.

Trusting strangers means accepting them into our “moral community.” Strangers may look different from us, they may have different ideologies or religions. But we believe that there is an underlying commonality of values. So it is not quite so risky to place faith in others. If we share a common fate, it is unlikely that these strangers will try to exploit our positive attitudes. The perception of common underlying values makes it easier to cooperate with strangers (cf. Putnam 1993, 171). Trust isn't the only route to cooperation (Levi 1999, 14), but agreements based upon trust may be more lasting and don't have to be renegotiated at every step.