It is an integral part of the Brazilian culture to not trust someone until they have proven they can be trusted. Once this trust has been earned, it is near impossible to lose it. This trait correlates with the heavy value Brazilians place on the family unit. The family is a cohesive group of people who are trusted and loved; bonds are formed from birth that are never broken. I see the choice to initially not trust someone as an attempt to protect themselves from getting hurt. It is almost a unspoken cultural rule that when someone earns your trust, you never let them down and have faith in them from that point onward.
In contrast, Americans tend to be very quick to trust until they have a reason not to. I share this trait, telling most friends, without hesitation, secrets of my life, etc. I don't have any deep, dark secrets to hide in the first place so trusting doesn't come difficultly. However, when someone tells a secret I've shared in confidence, I am wary to tell them other things because I feel like they don't respect our relationship.
I see this kind of trust happen everywhere in America - and I don't think its necessarily a bad thing. On a national level, this difference shows itself in the business world. In "Research on Small Businesses", it says that about 573,000 new firms open every year in the U.S. but about 470,000 open in Brazil each year. This radical difference of 100,000 more companies being opened in the U.S. shows how much more likely we are to take on risk to foster our ideas, despite failure statistics they might be facing. On the contrary, with long trusting companies (which are present in both the U.S. and Brazil), they are more likely to trust the structure they've always had, avoiding risk and novelty.
Everything we do involves risk but we'll never know the outcome if we don't take that leap of faith. What risk will you take today?
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