Socio-Cognitive Model of Trust

INtrODUctION Humans have learned to cooperate in many ways and in many environments, on different tasks, and for achieving different and several goals. Collaboration and cooperation in their more general sense (and, in particular, negotiation, exchange, help, delegation, adoption, and so on) are important characteristics-or better, the most foundational aspects-of human societies (Tuomela, 1995). In the evolution of cooperative models, a fundamental role has been played by diverse constructs of various kinds (purely interactional, technical-legal, organizational, socio-cognitive, etc.), opportunely introduced (or spontaneously emerged) to support decision making in collab-orative situations. The new scenarios we are destined to meet in the third millennium transfigure the old frame of reference, in that we have to consider new channels and infrastructures (i.e., the Internet), new artificial entities for cooperating with artificial or software agents, and new modalities of interaction (suggested/imposed by both the new channels and the new entities). In fact, it is changing the identification of the potential partners, the perception of the other agents, the space-temporal context in which interaction happen, the nature of the interaction traces, the kind and role of the authorities and guarantees, etc. For coping with these scenarios, it will be necessary to update the traditional supporting decision-making constructs. This effort will be necessary especially to develop the new cyber-societies in such a way as not to miss some of the important cooperative characteristics that are so relevant in human societies.