Three Approaches to Trust
A brief history of trust:
● Trust is “ a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon an expectation of
reciprocity”
Trust and related concepts
● Trust vs Individual risk-taking
- No reciprocity
● Trust vs confidence in beliefs
- No vulnerability
● Trust vs altruism
- No “expectation of reciprocity”
Professions with higher trust index
- Nurses
- Doctors
- Engineers
Three approaches to trust
● The generalized propensity to trust
- People have generalized expectations about others
- Parents, teachers, elected officials
- Religious individuals are more trusting than agnostics and atheists
- Low income individuals were less trusting
→ trust is correlated with peer-ratings of trustworthiness, popularity and friendliness
- Behavior is not consistent across different contexts
- Dispositions predict small percentage of variance in behavior
- Generalized propensity vs specific experience
● Trust in Society
- Factors influencing trust
➔ Low levels of crime and corruption
➔ Greater similarity (economic/ ethnic)
- Consequences of trust
➔ Economic growth
➔ Health and well-being
● Trust in individual decision - making
- People are cynical about whether strangers are trustworthy
➔ Predicting a strangers behavior is difficult
- People trust too much
➔ Given their cynical beliefs
- Evidence for principled truthfulness
➔ Not betrayal-aversion
A brief history of trust:
● Trust is “ a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon an expectation of
reciprocity”
Trust and related concepts
● Trust vs Individual risk-taking
- No reciprocity
● Trust vs confidence in beliefs
- No vulnerability
● Trust vs altruism
- No “expectation of reciprocity”
Professions with higher trust index
- Nurses
- Doctors
- Engineers
Three approaches to trust
● The generalized propensity to trust
- People have generalized expectations about others
- Parents, teachers, elected officials
- Religious individuals are more trusting than agnostics and atheists
- Low income individuals were less trusting
→ trust is correlated with peer-ratings of trustworthiness, popularity and friendliness
- Behavior is not consistent across different contexts
- Dispositions predict small percentage of variance in behavior
- Generalized propensity vs specific experience
● Trust in Society
- Factors influencing trust
➔ Low levels of crime and corruption
➔ Greater similarity (economic/ ethnic)
- Consequences of trust
➔ Economic growth
➔ Health and well-being
● Trust in individual decision - making
- People are cynical about whether strangers are trustworthy
➔ Predicting a strangers behavior is difficult
- People trust too much
➔ Given their cynical beliefs
- Evidence for principled truthfulness
➔ Not betrayal-aversion
