The Socio-cognitive Dynamics of Trust: Does Trust Create Trust?

We will examine in this paper three crucial aspects of trust dynamics: a) How A's trusting B and relying on it in situation can actually (objectively) in unce B's trustworthiness within . Either trust is a self-ful lling prophecy that modi es the probability of the predicted event; or it is a self-defeating strategy by negatively in uencing the events. And also how A can be aware of and take into account the e ect of its own decision in the very moment of that decision. b) How trust creates a reciprocal trust, and distrust elicits distrust; but also vice versa: how A's trust in B could induce lack of trust or distrust in B towards A, while A's di dence can make B more trustful in A. And also how A can be aware of and take into account this e ect of its own decision in the very moment of that decision. c) How di use trust di uses trust (trust atmosphere), that is how A's trusting B can in uence C trusting B or D, and so on. Those phenomena are very crucial in human societies (market, groups, states), however we claim that they are also very fundamental in computer mediated organizations, interactions (like Electronic Commerce), cooperation (Computer Supported Cooperative Work), etc. and even in Multi-Agent Systems with autonomous agents.