Psychological Foundations of Trust

Trust lies at the foundation of nearly all major theories of interpersonal relationships. Despite its great theoretical importance, a limited amount of research has examined how and why trust develops, is maintained, and occasionally unravels in relationships. Following a brief overview of theoretical and empirical milestones in the interpersonal-trust literature, an integrative process model of trust in dyadic relationships is presented. KEYWORDS—trust; interdependence; strain tests; felt security Trust: ‘‘confidence that [one] will find what is desired [from another] rather than what is feared.’’ (Deutsch, 1973, p.148) Trust involves the juxtaposition of people’s loftiest hopes and aspirations with their deepest worries and fears. It may be the single most important ingredient for the development and maintenance of happy, well-functioning relationships. Several major theories, including attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) and Erikson’s (1963) theory of psychosocial development, are built on the premise that higher levels of trust in relationships early in life lay the psychological foundation for happier and betterfunctioning relationships in adulthood. Tooby and Cosmides (1996) claim that trust-relevant emission and detection mechanisms should have evolved in humans, given the importance of gauging accurately the intentions of others. Considering the centrality of trust in relationships across the lifespan, one might expect the topic would have received widespread theoretical and empirical attention. Surprisingly, it has not. Although there have been significant pockets of theory (e.g., Holmes & Rempel, 1989) and research (e.g., Mikulincer, 1998; Rempel, Holmes, & Zanna, 1985) on the subject, relatively little is known about how and why interpersonal trust develops, is maintained, and unravels when betrayed. Why has trust received such limited attention? To begin with, trust is a complex, multidimensional construct, making it difficult to operationalize, measure, and interpret. Second, trust can be construed in different ways, and it might have varying importance at different stages of relationship development. Third, trust emerges and changes in situations that are difficult to observe and study, such as in ‘‘strain test’’ situations (Holmes, 1981). In strain-test situations, one individual is highly outcome dependent on his or her partner, but the actions that would promote the individual’s own interests differ from those that would benefit the partner. For example, if Chris desperately needs Susan’s help to complete an important task and Susan willingly helps despite the fact that doing so impedes what she really wants or needs to accomplish, Susan has ‘‘passed’’ a strain test and, accordingly, Chris should trust her more. In this article, I first discuss major theoretical and empirical accounts of interpersonal trust from which four basic principles can be distilled. I then describe a new process model of dyadic trust that integrates these principles. THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF TRUST Historically, there have been two main approaches to conceptualizing interpersonal trust. The earliest work adopted a dispositional (person-centered) view. According to this perspective, trust entails general beliefs and attitudes about the degree to which other people are likely to be reliable, cooperative, or helpful in experimental game situations (Deutsch, 1973) or in daily-life contexts (Rotter, 1971). Beginning in the early 1980s, conceptualizations and measures of trust started to focus on specific partners and relationships (Holmes & Rempel, 1989; Rempel et al., 1985). According to the dyadic (interpersonal) perspective, trust is a psychological state or orientation of an actor (the truster) toward a specific partner (the trustee) with whom the actor is in some way interdependent (that is, the truster needs the trustee’s cooperation to attain valued outcomes or resources). What makes trust particularly difficult to study is that it involves three components (e.g., ‘‘I trust you to do X’’; Hardin, 2003). Thus, trust is a Address correspondence to Jeffry A. Simpson, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0344; e-mail: [email protected]. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 264 Volume 16—Number 5 Copyright r 2007 Association for Psychological Science function of properties of the self (I), the specific partner (you), and the specific goal in a current situation (to do X). Kramer and Carnevale (2001) argue that trust involves a set of beliefs and expectations that a partner’s actions will be beneficial to one’s long-term self-interest, especially in situations in which the partner must be counted on to provide unique benefits or valuable outcomes. Trust-relevant situations typically activate two cognitive processes: (a) feelings of vulnerability; and (b) expectations of how the partner is likely to behave across time, particularly in strain-test situations. When the partner promotes the individual’s best interests rather than his or her own, both parties should experience heightened trust. Trust is also likely to be higher in a relationship when (a) each member’s self-interested outcomes match those that are best for their partner or the relationship, or (b) both members believe that their partner will act on what is best for the relationship even when the members’ personal self-interests diverge. Kelley et al. (2003) claim that trust can be assessed in certain interpersonal situations. Trust situations involve the configuration of high interdependence (such that the actions of each partner strongly impact the other), a blend of rules for coordination and exchange that sustain interdependence, and moderately corresponding interests (see Kelley et al., 2003, for further details). One prototypical trust situation is depicted in Figure 1. In this situation, trust should be facilitated when partners in a relationship repeatedly make A1/B1 (i.e., mutually beneficial) decisions that yield maximum rewards for both individuals. Most previous research on interpersonal trust has been guided by dispositional or interpersonal perspectives. Dispositionally oriented work has revealed that individuals who are more insecurely attached, have lower self-esteem, or have more poorly differentiated self-concepts (i.e., self-concepts that are less diversified, more imbalanced, and poorly tied together) trust their relationship partners less (see Simpson, 2007, for a review). Interpersonally oriented work has confirmed that trust is typically higher when individuals believe their partners are more committed to the relationship and have more benevolent intentions and motivations. It is also higher when partners regularly display prorelationship transformations of motivation (that is, turn initial gut-level negative reactions to caustic partner behaviors into constructive responses that benefit the relationship), which then generate self-sacrificial or accommodative behaviors. Research testing Holmes and Rempel’s (1989) dyadic model of trust has also indicated that the development of trust involves a process of uncertainty reduction as individuals move from having confidence in their partner’s general predictability to having confidence in their prorelationship values, motives, goals, and intentions (Holmes & Rempel, 1989). Based on a recent review of the interpersonal trust literature (Simpson, 2007), four core principles of interpersonal trust stand out. First, individuals gauge the degree to which they can trust their partners by observing whether partners display proper transformation of motivation in trust-diagnostic situations (that is, in trust or strain-test situations in which partners make decisions that go against their own personal self-interest and support the best interests of the individual or the relationship). Second, trust-diagnostic situations often occur naturally and unintentionally during the ebb and flow of everyday life. Depending on situational circumstances, however, individuals may enter, transform, or occasionally create trust-diagnostic situations to test whether their current level of trust in a partner is warranted. Third, individual differences in attachment orientations, selfesteem, or self-differentiation (i.e., working models of self and others as relationship partners) should affect the growth or decline of trust over time in relationships. People who are more securely attached, have higher self-esteem, or have more differentiated self-concepts should be more likely to experience trust as well as increases in trust in relationships across time. Fourth, neither the level nor the trajectory of trust in relationships can be fully understood without considering the dis0 −10 +10 +20 Partner A’s Choices