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Trust across Disciplines

Mental attitudes in trust - Regarding psychology

It is important to study the feeling of trust focusing on what happens into an individual's mind when he trusts someone else. This feeling is similar to others, such as faith, hope, confidence and so on, but it has specific characteristics that have to be considered and investigated. Only with a strong attention to the mental attitudes involved in trust it is possible to study this concept and reach a deep and clear understanding of it.

Psychologists studied this topic trying to distinguish the several mental situations similar to trust.

Morton Deutsch

Many definitions of trust stem from Deutsch's work on the subject. His 1973 book expands the definition further, and presents clarifications, eventually arriving at the definition of trust as confidence, which is confidence that one will find what is desired from another, rather than what is feared. [...] Much of the literature available refers to the idea of trust being confidence in some aspect or other of a relationship. Deutsch, however, presents many other aspects of trust in his 1973 work.

Trust as despair: this occurs when the negative consequences of not trusting, or of staying in the present situation, are so great or so certain that the trusting choice is made out of despair. [Trust] is the lesser of two evils.

Trust as social conformity: in many situations, trust is expected, and violations lead to severe sanctions. [An individual decides to trust otherwise] he may end up socially ostracised or labelled a coward.

Trust as innocence: the choice of a course of action may be made upon little understanding of the dangers inherent in the choice. This innocence may be rooted in lack of information, cognitive immaturity, or cognitive defect (pathological trust).

Trust as impulsiveness: inappropriate weight may be given to the future consequences of a trusting choice.

Trust as virtue: cooperative action and friendly social relations are predicated upon mutual trust and trustworthiness. Thus trust is naturally considered a virtue in social life.

Trust as masochism: pain and unfulfilled trust may be preferable to pleasure. Since people tend to try to confirm prior expectations, they will trust negatively, and generally find their expectations satisfied.

Trust as faith: [the trusting person] may have faith in preordained paths which mean that whatever awaits is fated and thus to be welcomed. Having faith to a large extent removes the negative consequences of a trusting decision.

Risk-taking or gambling: if the potential gains of winning are subjectively far greater than the potential losses from losing even should the risk be great, the gambling individual would be prepared to take that risk.

Trust as confidence: here one trusts because one has confidence one will find what is desired rather than what is feared. When Deustch uses the word fear here, he is implying that in order to trust, one must first take a risk.

Deutsch also analysed distrust: suspicion has been viewed as one of the central cognitive components of this negative feeling.

References

Marsh, S. P. (1994). Formalising Trust as a Computational Concept. PhD thesis, Department of Computing Science and Mathematics. University of Stirling.

Deutsch, M. (1962). Cooperation and Trust: Some Theoretical Notes. In Jones, M. R. (ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Nebraska University Press.

Deutsch, M. (1958). Trust and suspicion. Journal of Conflict Resolution. 2:265-79.

Other perspectives on mental attitudes

This topic is studied also in sociology and computer science. You may also want to read our contribution about mental attitudes in a trusting agent, where we present a beliefs/goals architecture.