The Fuzzy and Dynamic Nature of Trust

Trust is one of the most fuzzy, dynamic and complex concepts in both social and business relationships. The difficulty in measuring Trust and predicting Trustworthiness in service oriented network environments leads to many questions. These include issues such as how to measure the willingness and capability of individuals in the Trust dynamic and how to assign a concrete level of Trust to an individual or an Agent in a service oriented environment. It is also necessary to understand why Trust is fuzzy and changing with time and why we need to make sure that the context is clear when we refer to a Trust Relationship between two Agents. The dynamic nature of Trust creates the biggest challenge in measuring Trust and predicting Trustworthiness. In order to develop a Trustworthiness Measure and Prediction Method, we first need to understand what we can actually measure in a Trust Relationship. In this paper, we analyze the fuzzy, dynamic and complex nature of Trust. Note that we use the term fuzzy in this paper not in the sense of the precise definitions given in the Fuzzy Systems literature, but to indicate a certain vagueness, complexity or inappropriate definition and qualitative characterization, rather than a quantitative representation.