Trust (social sciences)

In a social context, trust has several connotations. The typical definition of trust follows the general intuition about trust and contains such elements as:
 * the willingness of one party (trustor) to be vulnerable to the actions of another party (trustee);
 * reasonable expectation (confidence) of the trustor that the trustee will behave in a way beneficial to the trustor;
 * risk of harm to the trustor if the trustee will not behave accordingly; and
 * the absence of trustor's enforcement or control over actions performed by the trustee.

Trust can be naturally attributed to relationships between people. It can be demonstrated that humans have a natural disposition to trust and to judge trustworthiness that can be traced to the neurobiological structure and activity of a human brain, and can be altered e.g. by the application of oxytocin.

Conceptually, trust is also attributable to relationships within and between social groups (families, friends, communities, organisations, companies, nations etc.). It is a popular approach to frame the dynamics of inter-group and intra-group interactions in terms of trust.

When it comes to the relationship between people and technology, the attribution of trust is a matter of dispute. The intentional stance demonstrates that trust can be validly attributed to human relationships with complex technologies. However, rational reflection leads to the rejection of an ability to trust technological artefacts.

One of the key current challenges in the social sciences is to re-think how the rapid progress of technology has impacted constructs such as trust. This is specifically true for information technology that dramatically alters causation in social systems.

In the social sciences, the subtleties of trust are a subject of ongoing research. In sociology and psychology the degree to which one party trusts another is a measure of belief in the honesty, fairness, or benevolence of another party. The term "confidence" is more appropriate for a belief in the competence of the other party. Based on the most recent research, a failure in trust may be forgiven more easily if it is interpreted as a failure of competence rather than a lack of benevolence or honesty. In economics trust is often conceptualized as reliability in transactions. In all cases trust is a heuristic decision rule, allowing the human to deal with complexities that would require unrealistic effort in rational reasoning.

Sociology
When it comes to trust, sociology is concerned with the position and role of trust in social systems. Interest in trust has grown significantly since the early eighties, from the early works of Luhmann, Barber and Giddens (see for a more detailed overview). This growth of interest in trust has been stimulated by on-going changes in society, characterised as late modernity and post-modernity.

Trust is one of several social constructs, an element of the social reality. Other constructs, frequently discussed together with trust, are: control, confidence, risk, meaning and power. Trust is naturally attributable to relationships between social actors, both individuals and groups (social systems). Because trust is a social construct, it is valid to discuss whether trust can be trusted (e.g. ), i.e. whether social trust operates as expected.

Society needs trust because it increasingly finds itself operating at the edge between confidence in what is known from everyday experience, and contingency of new possibilities. Without trust, all contingent possibilities should be always considered, leading to a paralysis of inaction. Trust can be seen as a bet on one of contingent futures, the one that may deliver benefits. Once the bet is decided (i.e. trust is granted), the trustor suspends his or her disbelief, and the possibility of a negative course of action is not considered at all. Because of it, trust acts as a reductor of social complexity, allowing for actions that are otherwise too complex to be considered (or even impossible to consider at all); specifically for cooperation.

Sociology tend to focus on two distinct views: the macro view of social systems, and a micro view of individual social actors (where it borders with social psychology). Similarly, views on trust follow this dichotomy. Therefore, on one side the systemic role of trust can be discussed, with a certain disregard to the psychological complexity underpinning individual trust. The behavioural approach to trust is usually assumed while actions of social actors are measurable, leading to statistical modelling of trust. This systemic approach can be contrasted with studies on social actors and their decision-making process, in anticipation that understanding of such a process will explain (and allow to model) the emergence of trust.

Sociology acknowledges that the contingency of the future creates dependency between social actors, and specifically that the trustor becomes dependent on the trustee. Trust is seen as one of the possible methods to resolve such a dependency, being an attractive alternative to control. Trust is specifically valuable if the trustee is much more powerful than the trustor, yet the trustor is under social obligation to support the trustee.

Modern information technologies not only facilitated the transition towards post-modern society, but they also challenged traditional views on trust. Empirical studies confirms the new approach to the traditional question regarding whether technology artefacts can be attributed with trust. Trust is not attributable to artefacts, but it is a representation of trust in social actors such as designers, creators and operators of technology. Properties of technological artefacts form a message to determine trustworthiness of those agents.

The discussion about the impact of information technologies is still in progress. However, it is worth noting a conceptual re-thinking of technology-mediated social groups, or the proposition of a unifying socio-technical view on trust , from the perspective of social actors.

Psychology
In psychology trust is believing the person who you trust to do what you expect. It starts at the family and grows to others. According to the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson development of basic trust is the first state psychosocial development occurring, or failing, during the first two years of life. Success results in feelings of security, trust, and optimism, while failure leads towards an orientation of insecurity and mistrust.

Trust is integral to the idea of social influence: it is easier to influence or persuade someone who is trusting. The notion of trust is increasingly adopted to predict acceptance of behaviors by others, institutions (e.g. government agencies) and objects such as machines. However, once again perception of honesty, competence and value similarity (slightly similar to benevolence) are essential. There are three different forms of trust. Trust is being vulnerable to someone even when they are trustworthy; Trustworthiness is the ability to trust, and trust propensity being able to rely on people. Once trust is lost, by obvious violation of one of these three determinants, it is very hard to regain. Thus there is clear asymmetry in the building versus destruction of trust. Hence being and acting trustworthy should be considered the only sure way to maintain a trust level.

Increasingly much research has been done on the notion of trust and its social implications:
 * Barbara Misztal in her book attempts to combine all notions of trust together. She points out three basic things that trust does in the lives of people: It makes social life predictable, it creates a sense of community, and it makes it easier for people to work together.
 * In the context of sexual trust Riki Robbins describes four stages of trust.
 * In the context of Information theory Ed Gerck defines and contrasts trust with social functions such as power, surveillance, and accountability.

In addition to the social influence, in organizational settings, trust may have a positive influence on the behaviors, perceptions, and performances of a person. One factor that enhances trust in a human being is facial resemblance. Evidence shows through manipulation of facial resemblance in a two person sequential trust game that having similar facial features (facial resemblance) enhanced trust in their partner. Structure often creates trust in a person that encourages them to feel comfortable and excel in the workplace. Working anywhere may be stressful and takes effort. By having a conveniently organized area to work on, concentration will increase as well as effort. Structure is not just a method of order. It increases trust and therefore makes a workplace manageable. A structured, ordered environment produces trust as one may contain increased cooperation and perform on a higher level.

People may work together and achieve success through trust while working on projects that rely on each individual’s contribution.

Conversely, where trust is absent, projects can fail, especially if this lack of trust has not been identified and addressed. This is one facet of VPEC-T analysis: This thinking framework is used when studying information systems. Identifying and dealing with cases where information providers, information users, and those responsible for processing information do not trust one another can result in the removal of a risk factor for a project.

One's social relationship characterized by low trust and norms that discourage academic engagement are expected to be associated with low academic achievement. Individuals that are in relationships characterized by high levels of social trust are more apt to openly exchange information and to act with caring benevolence toward one another than those in relationships lacking trust.

An important key to treating sexual victimization of a child is the rebuilding of trust between parent and child. Failure for the adults to validate the sexual abuse contributes to the child's difficulty towards trusting self and others. Trust is often affected by the erosion of a marriage. Children of divorce do not exhibit less trust in mothers, partners, spouses, friends, and associates than their peers of intact families. The impact of parental divorce is limited to trust in the father.

Philosophy
Some philosophers argue that trust is more than a relationship of reliance. Philosophers such as Annette Baier have made a difference between trust and reliance by saying that trust can be betrayed, whilst reliance can only be disappointed (Baier 1986, 235). Carolyn McLeod explains Baier's argument by giving the following examples: we can rely on our clock to give the time, but we do not feel betrayed when it breaks, thus, we cannot say that we trusted it; we are not trusting when we are suspicious of the other person, because this is in fact an expression of distrust (McLeod 2006). Thus, trust is different from reliance in the sense that the truster must accept the risk of being betrayed.

Economics
Trust in economics is treated as an explanation for a difference between actual human behaviour and the one that can be explained by the individual desire to maximise one's utility. In economic terms, trust can provide an explanation of a difference between Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimum. Such an approach can be applied to individuals and well as societies.

Trust is also seen as an economic lubricant, reducing the cost of transactions, enabling new forms of cooperation and generally furthering business activities, employment and prosperity. This observation created a significant interest in considering trust as a form of social capital and has led research into closer understanding of the process of creation and distribution of such capital. It has been claimed that higher level of social trust is positively correlated with economic development. Even though the original concept of 'high trust' and 'low trust' societies may not necessarily hold, it has been widely accepted and demonstrated that social trust benefits the economy and that a low level of trust inhibits economic growth.

Theoretical economical modelling demonstrated that the optimum level of trust that a rational economic agent should exhibit in transactions is equal to trustworthiness of the other party. Such a level of trust leads to efficient market. Trusting less lead to the loss of economic opportunities, trusting more leads to unnecessary vulnerabilities and potential exploitation.

Economics is also interested in quantifying trust, usually in monetary terms. The level of correlation between increase in profit margin or decrease in transactional cost can be used as indicators of economic value of trust.

Economic 'trust games' are popularly used to empirically quantify trust in relationships under laboratory conditions. There are several games and game-like scenarios related to trust that have been tried, with certain preferences to those that allow to estimate confidence in monetary terms. Games of trust are designed in a way that their Nash equilibrium differ from Pareto optimum so that no player alone can maximise his own utility by altering his selfish strategy without cooperation while cooperating partners can benefit.

The classical version of the game of trust has been described in as an abstracted investment game, using the scenario of an investor and a broker. Investor can invest a fraction of his money, and broker can return only part of his gains. If both players follow their economical best interest, the investor should never invest and the broker will never be able to re-pay anything. Thus the flow of money flow, its volume and character is attributable entirely to the existence of trust.

The game can be played as one-off, or as a repetitive one, between the same or different sets of players, to distinguish between a general propensity to trust and trust within particular relationships. Several other variants of this game exist. Reversing rules lead to the game of distrust, pre-declarations can be used to establish intentions of players, while alterations to the distribution of gains can be used to manipulate perception of both players. The game can be also played by several players on the closed market, with or without information about reputation.

Other interesting games are e.g. binary-choice trust games, the gift-exchange game and various other forms of social games. Specifically games based on the Prisoners Dilemma are popularly used to link trust with economic utility and demonstrate the rationality behind reciprocity.

The popularisation of e-commerce opened the discussion of trust in economy to new challenges while at the same time elevating the importance of trust, and desire to understand customer decision to trust. For example, inter-personal relationship between the buyer and the seller has been dis-intermediated by the technology, and had to be improved upon. Alternatively, web sites could be made to convince the buyer to trust the seller, regardless of seller's actual trustworthiness (e.g. ). Reputation-based systems improved on trust assessment by allowing to capture the collective perception of trustworthiness, generating significant interest in various models of reputation.

Media studies

 * Kelton; Fleischmann & Wallace (2008). Trust in Digital Information.
 * Kini, A., & Choobineh, J. (1998). Trust in electronic commerce: