Reflective quiz · For adults · Epistemic trust (ETMCQ)
Free trust issues quiz.
Fifteen questions, about three minutes. Most trust issues quizzes ask whether you check your partner's phone. This one asks what sits underneath: when someone tells you something, does it land, bounce off, or go straight through? It is the ETMCQ, a validated research measure of epistemic trust, the quiet capacity beneath closeness, learning, and how much you can get out of therapy.
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About this quiz
Trust issues start underneath.
Trust issues usually get talked about as a relationship problem: jealousy, checking, waiting for the betrayal. Those are real, and they are usually the surface. Underneath is a more basic question, one every one of us answered early and without noticing: how far can you trust what other people tell you? Some of us learned that people are mostly reliable, so advice and comfort can be taken in and used. Some of us learned to brace: to wonder what someone wants, to check everything ourselves, to nod along and quietly discard. And some of us learned to take in everything, including from people who did not have our interests at heart.
Researchers call these stances epistemic trust, mistrust, and credulity. They are not personality types, and nobody holds just one. But they shape how close you can get to people, how much you can learn from them, and how easily a therapist's words can reach you. Answer for how you generally are, and you will see where you land on all three.
Want the relationship side of the same picture? Take the attachment style quiz
Built on the Epistemic Trust, Mistrust and Credulity Questionnaire (ETMCQ), developed by Chloe Campbell, Michal Tanzer, Rob Saunders, Thomas Booker, Elizabeth Allison, Elizabeth Li, Claire O'Dowda, Patrick Luyten, and Peter Fonagy (2021), published in PLOS ONE under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Reproduced here for educational self-reflection.
When therapy has not worked before
Therapy that starts with trust.
Plenty of people who come to us have tried therapy and felt that nothing got through. Often the problem was never the technique. It was that trusting the person across the room was not yet a reasonable thing to do. Our doctoral-level psychologists work relationally, which means the relationship itself is where that trust gets rebuilt, slowly and on your terms. In Carlsbad, Encinitas, Vista, Pasadena, or online across California. It starts with a free 15-minute consultation.
Questions
About trust issues and this quiz.
01 Do I have trust issues?
This quiz gives you a more precise answer than yes or no. It measures three separate stances toward what other people tell you: trust, mistrust, and credulity. What people usually mean by trust issues shows up as a high mistrust score, bracing against what others say and wondering what they want. Some people are surprised to find a high credulity score instead, trusting too readily and getting hurt, which is a trust issue of a different kind. Many people carry some of both.
02 What causes trust issues?
Mostly relationships, and mostly early ones. We learn how far to trust what people tell us from the people who raised us, and later from the people who betrayed us or did not. The research behind this quiz found that adversity in childhood, including neglect and abuse, predicts both higher mistrust and higher credulity in adults. Guardedness is a sensible response to having been hurt. It only becomes a problem when it stays switched on around people who are safe.
03 Is it trust issues or anxiety?
They often travel together and can be hard to tell apart from the inside. Anxiety tends to be about what might happen. Trust issues are about whether what someone is telling you can be relied on. The two feed each other, since not being able to take in reassurance keeps anxiety running. Our attachment style quiz looks at the same territory from the relationship side, and taking both can be clarifying.
04 What is epistemic trust?
Epistemic trust is the willingness to treat what another person tells you as relevant, trustworthy, and worth taking in. It is the capacity that lets us learn from other people at all. The idea comes from the work of Peter Fonagy and colleagues, and it has become central to how relational and psychodynamic therapists think about why taking in help comes easily to some people and, through no fault of their own, much harder to others.
05 Are trust issues a mental illness?
No. Trust issues are not a diagnosis, and this quiz is not a diagnostic tool. The ETMCQ describes stances toward other people, not a disorder, and it has no clinical cutoffs. High mistrust and high credulity do tend to go along with more distress, not because they are flaws but because they make it harder to use the support around you. That is worth knowing, not worth feeling ashamed of.
06 Can trust issues be fixed?
Yes, though not by deciding to trust more. Trust was shaped by relationships, which means relationships can reshape it. For many people, a good therapy is the first place they get to test, slowly and on their own terms, whether letting someone in is safe, and to discover that it can be. If you have tried therapy before and felt that nothing got through, this is often the missing piece, and it is exactly what relational therapy works on.
Ready when you are
Letting someone in is a skill.
It can be learned, and it can be learned late. Starting is a short, no-pressure conversation to see if we are a good fit. We would be glad to hear from you.