• Fast Company, Tuesday, July 19, 2011 12:07 PM

Does the Web -- and in particular social networks -- actually engender trust? Indeed it does, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. Even more remarkable, Pew found that the more time consumers spend online, the more trusting they become of it. As the report put it, "The typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted," with regular Facebook users the most trusting of all.

"This has significant implications, because far from being merely a touchy-feely concept tossed around at a Zen retreat, trust goes to the heart of our economic and social systems," Adam Penenberg, a journalism professor at NYU, writes in Fast Company.

As Penenberg explains, neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak, a professor at Claremont College and author of the forthcoming book, "The Moral Molecule: Vampire Economics and the New Science of Good and Evil," says that trust is the lubricant that makes economic transactions possible.

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