The Trust Experiments

An acclaimed design thinker shows how societies have been built to push us apart—and how they can be rebuilt for human connection

Imagine you dropped your wallet and a stranger found it. Would you get it back? Your answer to this question says a lot about you: It predicts your happiness, the health of your community, and even the stability of your country. Trust in other people is integral to the good life.

The bad news is that, as rates of alienation and polarization skyrocket, social trust has plummeted throughout the world, widening cracks in society and making us all more susceptible to loneliness, division, violence and extremism.

In The Trust Experiments, Charles Montgomery reveals that this crisis isn’t being driven by a sudden drop in trustworthiness. It’s the result of a collision between human psychology and countless bad design decisions over the course of modern history: Contemporary homes discourage neighborly contact. Cities force us into solitary commutes. Social media algorithms widen schisms across society. And government policies deepen inequity, breaking trust between people and the institutions that serve us.

From the baugruppen of Germany to the co-housing villages of Vancouver to the Utopias of Mexico, Montgomery takes us into intentional communities that have been designed to promote mutual care. He meets Taiwanese activists who are using AI to reverse the antisocial effect of social media. He shows how governments from Denmark to Costa Rica have been redesigned to boost trust across entire societies. And he shows how we can all use design in our own lives to rebuild the trusting relationships that keep us happy, healthy and strong.