Trust: a definition

WHAT IS TRUST? A DEFINITION.

A hell of a lot is going on when someone trusts another. It seems a straightforward process, and we use the word 'trust' easily (too easily?) in everyday conversation to cover a multitude of different relationships of varying quality, but if you study the process involved in person A trusting person B it quickly becomes apparent that it is hugely complicated, and endlessly fascinating (to me, anyway).

The way I see it, trust comes in three parts, and generally materialises in this order:

• Trust as a set of beliefs. Albert believes certain things to be true about Doris and about how she will act in the future, and these beliefs form the basis of his trust in her. In other words, these beliefs are his assessment of her trustworthiness.

The important quality of these beliefs, which crucially distinguishes trust from its close cousins - hope, blind faith and gullibility - is that they are confident positive expectations (Lewicki et al., 1998). 'Confident' means Albert has good reason(s) to believe what he does about Doris: his beliefs about her are based on more than intuition or guesswork; he can call on some evidence to back up why he believes what he does. (If he can't, then strictly speaking, he is dealing in hope, blind faith or gullibility instead. Positive confidence is the crucial difference.) I get on to what Albert believes about Doris (i.e. the content of these beliefs) in a bit.

'Expectations' is also a critical word in this definition: trust does not deal in certainties, but nor does it deal in hope. When Albert trusts Doris, he expects (no more, no less) that she will not abuse his trust, or let him down.

Albert thinking that Doris is trustworthy does not automatically mean that he will go on to actually trust Doris. The two are separate concepts.

• Trust as a decision. Albert has to make a decision to trust her. This decision has been defined as "a willingness to render oneself vulnerable" to the other person (Rousseau et al., 1998).

Albert decides to trust Doris, on the expectation (derived from his set of beliefs about her) that she is unlikely to do anything damaging to him... I'd argue that deciding to 'trust' someone without these confident positive beliefs is not technically 'trust', although we call it such in everyday conversation (e.g. "I'm just going to have to trust you"); it is instead 'hope', 'blind faith' or 'gullibility'.

• Trust as a behaviour/ action. Several conceptualisations of trust stop there, at trustworthiness and the decision to trust. This is a mistake. Why is trusting behaviour important for trust?

Well, Albert may believe he can trust Doris, and he may even have decided to trust her, but until he engages in trusting behaviours, is he really trusting her? It's the difference between having trust in someone (the belief and perhaps the decision) and acting on that basis (i.e. the 'trust' behaviours).

These specific, trust-informed behaviours are:

a) Reliance (allowing that person discretion to act on our behalf; relying upon them; surrendering to them control over something that is valuable to you),

b) Disclosure (sharing sensitive information with them) and

c) Deliberate reduction in 'monitoring' of that person's behaviour (i.e. not checking up on them, because we don't feel the need).

For me, these trusting behaviours are key to the whole process of trusting someone, and any study of trust is incomplete without them.

So, with this three-stage trust process in mind, we can summarise trust as:

Confident positive expectations about the likely conduct of another party in the future, such that...
... one is willing to take the risk to render oneself vulnerable to that party, on the assumption that non-detrimental outcomes are unlikely (and beneficial outcomes likely)...
... as a result of which, one may behave in three main ways: relying on the other party, disclosing sensitive information to that party, and deliberately reducing one's monitoring of that party.

In another post I look at the content of these beliefs, and the common sources of evidence we make use of in coming to these beliefs.