Why Is Trust Important In Othello

Trust is a very important idea in the play Othello by William Shakespeare. This is important because throughout the play, Iago is deemed as honest and trustworthy, but is very clearly neither of these. He still manages to get into Othello's mind and through many forms of manipulation makes Othello believe anything he tells him without looking further into potential truths. So is it reasonable to infer that we don't look into truths because we trust the first things we hear? Not only does trust play a very important role in the quality of relationships within the play, it also plays one of if not the most important roles in any given relationship because without trust a relationship cannot work. But what is trust? According to Paul Thagard

According to Dennis Jaffe “A person or group that is true to their word and fulfills their commitments encourages trust.” showing commitment to something in a relationship is a critical way of building and improving trust. In Othello this is shown on page 185 when Iago says “And for Cassio, let me be his undertaker” (Shakespeare Act 4. Scene 1. Line 232. 185) First Iago is talking to Othello about killing Desdemona and Othello says nothing about Cassio, but Iago says that he will handle Cassio, which shows true commitment to the plan of getting rid of Desdemona and Cassio. Another example from the article is when Dennis Jaffe says “When management meets in secret or does not share important information, team members can easily become distrustful.” This is saying that when a person doesnt share important information with the other that person can lose their trust. We can see throughout the play that Iago is not like this and shares everything with Othello which is all bad information that helps Iago with his plan to ruin Othello and take over Cassios previous position. This is shown heavily on page 147 when Othello says “Give me a living reason she's disloyal” and Iago says “ I do not… to the moor!” In the long quote from Iago he tells Othello a lot of poor fake information about Desdemona and Cassio but is very open to telling Othello everything he knows which causes Othello to trust

But how does Iago use manipulation in the form of repetition to cause Othello not to look deep into truths? According to Antonia Peacocke and her artice titled “Say it enough, they’ll believe it” “If you repeat something, people are more likely to believe it.” This is portrayed to be true throughout the play by Iago because he repeats the word honest many times about himself. Not only does he do that but he also calls others honest to make Othello believe him. On page 149 Iago says “She may be honest yet. Tell me but this: Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief spotted with strawberries in your wifes hand.” from this we can see that Iago is using something very significant to Othello and Desdemonas relationship to make Othello feel even worse about the situation and not want to know anything worse than her not having the handkerchief. According to the article “Why you hide from the truth—and how to stop it” “Willfully avoiding important information is a phenomenon researchers call ‘behavior information avoidance or strategic ignorance’". Othello does this because also according to this article “ facts that may make us feel bad, or information that challenges our assumptions about ourselves.” and this is clearly shown on page 157 when Othello says “But if she lost it, or made a gift of it, my fathers eye should hold her loathed, and his spirits should hunt after new fancies.” this is a clear example of the handkerchief being very