Trust and Attitudes

Trust is a key element in the initiation of cooperation and the formation of attitudes, and it therefore plays an important role in the acceptance of new technologies. Most people cannot evaluate the benefits and risks associated with technological developments because they lack the basic knowledge required for such evaluations. As a result, they have to rely on the assessments of experts. In controversial fields like gene technology or nanotechnology, there are experts with conflicting views. By definition, laypeople are largely unable to evaluate the technical arguments voiced by these experts. Laypeople must rely instead on cues like trust in selecting which experts to believe. As suggested by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, trust is a method for reducing the complexity that confronts us in a modern society characterized by highly developed division of labor. Instead of becoming technically learned in various fields, we take the risk of trusting experts and accepting their assessments. Trust is most important in situations that are distinguished by a high level of uncertainty and/or a high degree of personal moral importance.

Trust has been examined in various social science fields, such as psychology, mass communication, marketing, and risk management. This research shows the importance of trust for attitude formation and cooperation. Cooperation has been measured in a variety of ways—as willingness to buy a product or willingness to accept a hazard-management policy, for example. Attitude is also a rather broad concept. Initially, attitude was defined as an overall evaluation of an entity, ranging from negative to positive. For entities people are not familiar with, trust may have a strong impact on attitude formation. This condition applies to many controversial emerging technologies.