Trust

Conceptualizations of Trust

Interpersonal trust has been studied with two traditions in psychology. Earlier work adopted a dispositional view of trust in which trust was viewed as a property of individuals similar to personality traits such as shyness or extraversion. According to this approach, trust involves beliefs and attitudes about the degree to which other people in general can be depended on to be reliable, cooperative, and helpful. In the 1980s, conceptualizations and measures of trust became more partner-specific and relationship-specific. According to this dyadic or interpersonal view, trust is a psychological state or orientation of an individual (the truster) toward a specific partner (the trustee) with whom the individual is interdependent (that is, the truster needs the trustee's cooperation to obtain valued outcomes or resources). According this perspective, the

extent to which an individual trusts one person has no necessary association with how much she or he trusts another person. What makes interpersonal trust especially difficult to study is that it involves three components: “I trust you to do X.” In other words, trust depends on properties of the self (I), the specific partner (you), and the current situation (to do X).

Social psychologists Roderick Kramer and Peter Carnevale have further proposed that trust involves a set of beliefs, expectations, and attributions about the degree to which a partner's actions are likely to support one's long-term self-interests, particularly in situations in which one must count on the partner to provide unique benefits or critical outcomes. Such trust-relevant situations typically activate two cognitive processes: (1) feelings of vulnerability, and (2) expectations of how the partner is likely to behave across time. When a partner promotes an individual's best interests instead of his or her own, both parties are likely to feel and report greater trust. Trust is also likely to be higher when (a) each partner's self-interested outcomes match (are similar), (b) both partners have self-interested outcomes that match those that are best for the relationship, or (c) both individuals believe that their partner will act on what is best for the relationship, even when the partners' personal self-interests are at odds.

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