We spend a lot of time agonising about the state of trust in the UK.

That’s understandable. We’re regularly reminded that we shouldn’t take people or things at their word. Politicians often mislead and occasionally outright lie. Businesses make claims that don’t always stack up. We – the humble citizen – are guilty too. We lie to ourselves and each other, sometimes about little things, sometimes bigger things.

In recent years, concerns seem to have intensified. Donald Trump has hastened a post-truth era of political discourse. Our media environment has fragmented, with many people getting information from unverified, unregulated sources. An AI throws a new digital spanner in the works: can we even trust the evidence of our eyes and ears anymore?

But what if we’re worrying about the wrong thing?

Levels of trust in the UK – in ordinary people, in experts, in politicians, in media – aren’t always high, but over the long term, they’re not really changing much. What’s actually changed – and declined – is deference.

Deference is related to trust but different. It’s not about believing what people say but respecting their perspective, experience or authority.

Declining deference is a mixture of good and bad. It’s possible that lower deference makes us less likely to believe good information when we encounter it – and raise scepticism about vaccines, or encourage conspiracy theories. But it means people are more willing to question authority and challenge power, to overturn injustices and improve the status quo.

In our next trends briefing we’ll discuss these questions and more, drawing on long term trends and hot-off-the-press data from our Optimism Index sentiment tracker. We’ll look at levels of trust, cynicism, autonomy, belief in conspiracy theories and media consumption to understand what elements of trust and deference are changing – and what aren’t. As ever, our analysis will come with implications for policymakers, strategists and communicators.