Trust

Scholars as well as ordinary citizens agree that trust is an important lubricant for social relations and that trust helps build a prosperous society. Beyond the importance of trust in our social and personal lives, however, there is little consensus concerning the nature and function of trust. Even the broadest definition of trust as an expectation of natural and social order, a definition on which many Westerners agree, meets objections in some non-Western cultures. For example, a Japanese person will never say, “I trust that the sun will rise again tomorrow.” Furthermore, trust as expectations of the trustee's ability to perform a trusted action is different from trust as expectations of the trustee's intention to perform the same action (Barber 1983). The lack of consensus among the social scientists interested in trust reflects the fact that trust is a multifaceted concept. The definitions and theories of trust vary as different facets of the concept are examined.

There are three common usages of the word trust. First, the word trust is used to refer to trustworthiness. When people talk of the “decline in trust in American society,” this meaning is being employed. Second, trust is used to refer to trustfulness. Scales used to measure trust by psychologists (e.g., Rotter 1971) are measuring individual differences in the degree to which individuals expect others to be trustworthy. Third and finally, trust is used to refer to the act of trust.

The act of trust is easy to define. The most common and the easiest way to understand what we mean by the act of trust is illustrated in the game of trust. The game of trust is played by two players. One of the players, Player A, makes a choice to trust (T) or to not trust (NT) the second player, Player B. When A chooses NT, the game ends there, and the status quo is maintained. When Player A chooses to trust, the game continues and Player B is given a choice between honoring Player A's trust (H, honor trust) and not honoring Player A's trust (NH, not honor trust). The outcome for Player B if he chooses not to honor Player A's trust is better than the outcome for Player B if he chooses to honor Player A's trust (NH > H for B). The outcome for Player A if Player B chooses not to honor her trust (NH) is less than the status quo (NH < 0 for A), and the outcome for Player A if Player B chooses to honor her trust (H) is greater than the status quo (H > 0 for A). If Player A believes that Player B will honor her trust, T is a better [Page 848]choice for him than NT. If Player A does not believe that Player B will honor her trust, NT is a better choice than T. Thus, A's choice in this game reflects his trust in B, and B's choice reflects her trustworthiness in this relationship. If we assume that both players are rational in the sense that they care only about their own welfare, and expect that others are similarly rational, B will not honor A's trust. Thus, A, expecting that B will not honor her trust, will not choose T. However, most experimental studies using the game of trust between anonymous players find that a substantial proportion of B's choose to honor the trust of A's (H). And they find that a sizable proportion of A's choose to trust B's (T). Social scientists are interested in finding out why people behave in both a trustworthy manner and a trustful manner.

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