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Trust across Disciplines

Control and contracts in trust - Our socio-cognitive approach

In situations where there could be little space for trust, such as in very uncertain environments or when we have to deal with partners that we believe are not trustworthy, control and contracts could help.

This is not a linear effect though, because the relation between trust and control is quite complex and because contracts can produce not only positive effects like stability in interactions but also counter-productive results due to the reactions of the agents against the rules.

Trust and control

Trust in an agent and control of this agent are antagonistic: where there is trust there is no control, and viceversa; the larger the trust the less room for control, and viceversa. But they are also supplementary: one remedies to the lack of the other. They are parts of one and the same entity.

Moreover, control can augment trustee's trustworthiness, for example by making him more careful because he knows he is surveilled. Besides this effect produced in the partner of the interaction, control can enhance the probability of a positive outcome in an actions plan, because monitoring and surveillance can prevent errors and mistakes.

Control can be negative too, as reported by psycologists like Cialdini, because it can induce anxiety or even rebellion in the partner.

Trust and contracts

Contracts are not an automatic way to build trust, because they introduce another form of trust, that is trust in the contract itself and in the fact that the partner will follow the rules imposed by the contract.

Moreover it is not uncommon that the contracts have a discouragingly big number of rules. Agents could decide not to enter in a transaction because it seems too complex. This is especially the case when we are dealing with electonic commerce or online interactions.

References

Castelfranchi, C. & Falcone, R. (2000). Trust and Control: A Dialectic Link. Applied Artificial Intelligence Journal, Vol. 14, N° 8, pp. 799-823. Electronic version available.

Falcone, R. & Castelfranchi, C. (2001). The Human in the Loop of a Delegated Agent: The Theory of Adjustable Social Autonomy. In IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans. Special Issue on Socially Intelligent Agents - the Human in the Loop, Vol. 31, N° 5, September 2001, pp. 406-418. Electronic version available.

If you want to read more on these topics, read these pages of our Trust theory: Trust and control, Trust and adjustable autonomy, Trust as a three party relationship.

Other perspectives on control and contracts

This topic is studied also in psychology and computer science: read this contributions in order to understand better the critiques we presented in this page.