The Psychology of Trust

Ken J. Rotenberg

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317193081
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Psychology
• Thema: History & Theory in Psychology

What makes us trust people? How is trust developed and maintained? Is Western society facing a crisis of trust?

The Psychology of Trust addresses trust issues that are directly relevant to peoples' experiences in their daily lives. It identifies the factors that cause people to trust, and the consequences of trust for real world issues in health, politics, terrorism, the workplace, and religious faith. It also explores the impact of a lack of trust, and what causes distrust of individuals, groups and organisations.

In a world where trust impacts our daily lives, The Psychology of Trust shows the role trust plays in our relationships, and provides practical guidance regarding our own trust in others.

1

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Understanding trust

A crisis or everything?

Authors from many disciplines and across the world have held the position that trust is the cornerstone of society and essential to its survival. This view has been espoused in the disciplines of philosophy (O’Hara, 2004), political science (Uslander, 2002), sociology (Misztal, 1996), and psychology (Rotenberg, 2010; Rotter, 1980). Trust between individuals of different cultures (cross-cultural trust) has been viewed as fundamental to the survival of multicultural societies (Misztal, 1996; Uslander, 2002). The importance of trust highlights the danger posed by the reported growing lack of trust in contemporary society.

A chorus of writers has expressed the proposition that trust is in crisis in contemporary society. Guided by his findings based on his Trust Barometer, Richard Edelman (2015) has asserted, “For the first time since the Great Recession, half the countries we survey have fallen into the ‘distruster’ category” (n.p.). He argued that this was due to the “failure of key institutions to provide answers or leadership in response to events such as the refugee crisis, data breaches, China’s stock market downturn, Ebola in west Africa, the invasion of Ukraine, the FIFA bribery scandal, VW’s manipulation of emissions data, massive corruption at Petrobras, and exchange-rate manipulation by the world’s largest banks” (n.p.). According to the public media, Britain “is suffering a huge loss of faith in its institutions: Trust in all politicians has slumped to an all-time low” (Slack, 2016, n.p.). Also, survey studies report that the trust of the American people has decreased across the last decade (Zizumbo-Colunga, Zechmeister, & Seligso, 2010). Academic research has not escaped the “crisis” of trust and there are reports that a substantial number of findings presented in journals are inaccurate and biased (see Walia, 2015).

The bulk of support for the idea of trust in crisis is derived from surveys in popular forums that typically assess general views. The findings from surveys are questionable, but they serve the dual function of expressing public concern about trust (i.e., anxiety regarding it) and shaping public opinion regarding trust. The survey findings convey a simple message to a waiting public: Trust is in crisis and it is on the decline! Implicit in the survey reports is the notion that the world has become more corrupt and untrustworthy. It is very difficult to confirm or deny that conclusion, because of lack of evidence. It is fair to say that corruption and untrustworthiness have been present throughout the course of human history (Machiavelli testified to this in the late 1400s). What is clear is that access to information revealing people’s untrustworthiness is greater than at any time in human history. Because of technology and social media every action is conveyed to millions of people – in the blink of an eye – and is held up for public scrutiny. This change has resulted in an unequalled opportunity for critical evaluation of peoples’ behaviour, the detection of untrustworthiness, and the expression of lack of trust in others – especially regarding those individuals in the public eye.

The emphasis on “crises” in trust unfortunately diverts our attention from the notion that trust is essential to day-to-day social interaction and the formation and maintenance of interpersonal relationships (see Rotenberg, 2010). From my perspective, trust is analogous to dark matter in the physical universe. Dark matter is an extensive but difficult-to-detect substance that binds planets and terrestrial material. Similarly, trust is a prevalent but often silent force that connects people and ensures social relationships and social functioning in modern society. I am certain, that without it, our social “universe” would not exist.

The preceding may seem like a bold assertion but careful consideration shows that even the simplest social acts involve trust. For example, I went for lunch in the university building the other day. I bought American street food and a bottle of fizzy drink. There were no food trays so I placed my drink on the counter while I took my American street food to a table around the corner. When I returned to the counter, I found that my drink had been taken. Perhaps one of the thirsty new students who was milling about took it; one will never know. In this situation, I had trusted others both by beliefs and action not to steal my drink. Sadly, that was violated. Nevertheless, I walked off without my drink at the food register in that same building the very next day. The student next to me in line drew my attention to my drink as I was leaving, and I got it. My trust was renewed – although my problem for ensuring that I collect my drink likely remains. The point here is that there are millions of day-to-day social acts that involve trust. Once trust is properly conceptualised and we sidestep the crisis view of it then we come to understand the overwhelming prevalence of trust in our social world. It is not necessary to assert that trust is in crisis to view it as worthy of investigation – although the crisis view may spur on that activity. Let us begin at the beginning, though, by asking the question regarding what trust is. Dictionary definitions are a beginning.

Popular definitions of trust

The use of the word “trust” in common discourse dates back to the 13th century, in Middle English. It is regarded as probably being of Scandinavian origin, akin to Old Norse traust (trust); akin to Old English tre¯owe (faithful) (Merriam-Webster dictionary). The word “trust” dates back much earlier, though, when considered in the context of religion. Trust in God is found both in the Old and New Testaments (Benner, 2004) as well as the Koran. In current times, the religious use of trust is demonstrated in the phrase “In God We Trust”, which is the official motto of the US and appears on much of its currency (see Chapter 11).

Aside from the trusts found in banking and financing, “trust” is defined in dictionaries as a “belief that someone or something is reliable, good, effective etc.” (Merriam-Webster dictionary) and “to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable” (Cambridge English dictionary). This book will focus on trust in someone as part of the domain of interpersonal trust. Also, research addressing self-trust was excluded for practical reasons. The term “interpersonal” is omitted from the text for brevity.

Elements of popular definitions of trust are (quite correctly) found in academic conceptualisations of trust. It is important to highlight that the conceptualisation of trust in academic writings varies considerably according to the theory, framework, model, or approach adopted by a researcher. This very fact contributes to the problems that researchers with different approaches have in engaging with each other’s concepts. These differences contribute to divergence in deciding whether or not the study and findings are accepted by the academic community and publishable. In that context, I will now describe the different approaches to the investigation of trust.

Approaches to the investigation of trust

Psychosocial Theory

Erikson’s (1963) Psychosocial Theory is regarded as one of the origins of contemporary psychology. This theory is the most commonly cited account of trust in introductory and developmental psychology texts. The theory posits that development is composed of a sequence of eight stages of psychosocial development. Each stage entails a conflict that can be resolved in a psychologically healthy or unhealthy fashion. The resolution at one stage affects the capacity of the individual to resolve subsequent stages in the sequence. The first is the “Trust vs Mistrust” stage, which occurs from birth to 18 months of age. According to Erikson (1963), during that period, trust is an emotion that comprises an infant’s experiential state of confidence that he or she is valued and his or her needs will be met. If the infant encounters that warmth/nurturance from his or her caregiver then he or she attains a basic trust. By contrast, if the infant encounters a lack of warmth/rejection then he or she attains a basic mistrust. The infant who attains basic trust is able to delay gratification and exert control over his or her bodily functions (e.g., bowels). According to this theory the emotion of trust during infancy profoundly affects the course of development.

Attachment Theory

Bowlby (1980) and others such as Ainsworth (e.g., Ainsworth, 1989) have advanced Attachment Theory. According to this theory, infants form different qualities of attachment as a result of the nature of the nurturance and sensitivity of their care provider – primarily their mother. As a product of the interactions and the quality of attachment, a child constructs an Internal Working Model (IWM) that represents his or her care provider, self, and the relationship between them. The IWM establishes a cognitive-affective framework that affects later psychosocial functioning.

Trust has been conceptualised in the attachment theory and research in two ways. First, trust has been viewed as the infant using the care provider as a secure base that is an integral part of the quality of attachment (Waters & Deane, 1985). Second, it has been proposed that securely as opposed to insecurely attached children develop an IWM that includes social expectations characterised by a sense of trust in others and positive thoughts regarding the intentions of other people’s behaviour (Cohn, 1990). From my perspective, attachment style is a complex and multidimensional construct and it would be misguided to regard trust as synonymous with attachment.

Piagetian Theory

Piaget (1965) examined children’s evaluations of lying, among other behaviours, as evidence for moral development. He proposed that young children (7 years and under) demonstrate moral realism (moral objectivity) and thus fail to take into consideration the intentions guiding communication. The young children viewed mistakes that caused harm as a lie and reprehensible – even though the consequences of the lie were unintended. By contrast, older children showed subjective morality by giving considerable weight to the intentions guiding the communication and regarded incorrect communication as a lie when intended to deceive others. Contrary to Piaget’s formulations, contemporary research shows that young children do consider intentions in determining lying. The research does show, though, that children’s utilisation of intentions in determining lying increase in complexity with development (Peterson, Peterson, & Seeto, 1983). Older children and adults regard lying as detrimental to trust in social relationships.

Generalised trust beliefs

Julian Rotter is one of the pioneers of research on trust. He is responsible (in part) for why I have embarked on the study of trust: a task that has taken my academic career. Many years ago, Rotter gave an invited talk on trust to the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, which I attended. Rotter (1980) was keenly aware that trust is a fundamental issue in the dilemmas faced by modern society. Guided by Social Learning Theory, he proposed that experiences of promised negative or positive reinforcements shaped individuals’ expectancies of those behaviours that generalise across social agents. As a consequence, individuals established stable generalised expectancies of the extent that the oral or written statements of other people can be relied upon. Those generalised expectancies could be acquired by direct learning from the behaviour of social agents (parents, teachers, peers, etc.) and from verbal statements regarding others made by significant people or trusted sources of communication.

The approach to trust by Paul Harris and his colleagues

I refer to this approach as Knowledge Acquisition Theory (KAT). Harris (2007) proposed that trust guides children’s acquisition of knowledge and beliefs regarding a wide range of abstract entities/concepts (religion, scientific evidence, history) with which they have no personal contact with. The children acquired knowledge and beliefs by depending on the information provided by social agents. Harris argued that children are not simple consumers of information but engage in an evaluation of the validity of that knowledge from a very early age.

Social capital

According to the Social Capital Approach, trust is a quality established among members of society, or social networks that bind individuals together and promote norms of reciprocal cooperation. The cooperation results in benefits to individuals themselves as well as to bystanders (Cozzolino, 2011). Social capital is regarded as a multidimensional construct that applies to relations with family and friends, neighbourhoods, citizens in society, the state, and institutions (Rostila, 2010).

Romantic trust

There are two approaches to romantic trust: Attachment and Romantic- Faith. Regarding the Attachment Approach, Hazen and Shaver (1987) proposed that the love experienced in an adult romantic relationship is an attachment process similar to the one found in infancy. These authors conceptualised the infant patterns of attachment – secure, avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent – as forms of romantic attachment for adults. It was found that the distribution of securely attached, avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent were similar to those found in infant attachments. Based on the adults’ retrospective reports of their infancy, the researchers identified continuity between the quality of attachments during infancy and the quality of romantic attachments during adulthood.

Regarding the Romantic-Faith Approach, Rempel, Holmes, and Zanna (1985) identified three types of trust in adults’ romantic relationships: predictability (consistent vs inconsistent behaviour), dependability (attributed honesty and empathy), and faith (responsive and caring whatever will happen in the future). According to research by Rempel et al. (1985), trust progresses from predictability to dependability and then to faith as romantic relationships develop.

Game Theory

Games have been used to examine trust from the very beginning of research on the topic (e.g., Deutsch, 1958). In contemporary research, the game involves an exchange between two players in which cooperation and defection are assessed by the amount of money designated for a partner (Montague, King-Casas, & Cohen, 2006). During this exchange, one player (the investor, Player A) is given a certain amount of money or points (as proxies for money). The investor can keep all the money or decide to “invest” some amount with the partner (the trustee, or Player B), which is tripled in value as it is sent to the other player, who then decides what portion to return to the investor. It has been found that investors tend to make substantial initial offers to trustees so that the split is considered fair (e.g., if given $20 the investor may invest $10 with the trustee).

Social Contact and Exchange theories

Social Contact and Exchange theories of trust are found in different disciplines: psychology, criminology, sociology, and organisational sciences. Trust is regarded as the product of exchanges of benevolent outcomes between individuals guided by practices of fairness and rules of justice (e.g., Schoorman, Mayer, & Davis, 2007).

The Bases, Domains, and Target Dimensions (BDT) Framework

The BDT was advanced by my colleagues and myself (Rotenberg, 2010). The BDT Framework specifies that trust comprises three bases (reliability, emotional, honesty), three domains (cognitive/affect, behaviour-dependent, behaviour-enacting) and two target dimensions (familiarity, specificity). The three bases are: (1) reliability, comprising fulfilment of words or promises; (2) emotional, comprising refraining from causing emotional harm and by being receptive to disclosure and maintaining confidentiality of them; (3) honesty, comprising telling the truth and engaging in behaviour guided by benevolent rather than malevolent intention. The three domains are: (1) cognitive/affect, which comprises individuals’ beliefs/feelings that others demonstrate the three bases of trust (e.g., trust beliefs); (2) behaviour-dependent, which comprises individuals behaviourally relying on others to act in a trusting fashion as per the three bases of trust; and (3) behaviour-enacting, which comprises individuals behaviourally engaging in the three bases of trust (e.g., trustworthiness). The bases and domains span across two target dimensions: familiarity, which ranges from highly to slightly familiar; and specificity, which ranges from specific others to general others. Finally, the BDT specifies that trust is a reciprocal process in which trusting beliefs and behaviours are matched by partners in dyads. These reciprocal exchanges result in a common social history of the partners.

Summary

This chapter began by addressing the question of whether trust was a crisis or a theory of everything. The chapter included popular definitions of trust and concluded with summaries of theories and approaches to the topic of trust.