The Psychology of Interpersonal Trust

Theory and Research

Ken J. Rotenberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351035729
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Trust is a crucial facet of social functioning that feeds into our relationships with individuals, groups, and organizations. The Psychology of Interpersonal Trust: Theory and Research examines existing theories, frameworks, and models of trust as well as the methods and designs for examining it. To fully examine how interpersonal trust impacts our lives, Rotenberg reviews the many essential topics trust relates to, including close relationships, trust games, behavioural trust, and trust development.

Designed to encourage researchers to recognize the links between different approaches to trust, this book begins with an overview of the different approaches to interpersonal trust and a description of the methods used to investigate it. Following on from this, each chapter introduces a new subtopic or context, including lying, adjustment, socialization, social media, politics, and health. Each subtopic begins with a short monologue (to provide a personal perspective) and covers basic theory and research. Rotenberg's applied focus demonstrates the relevance of interpersonal trust and highlights the issues and problems people face in contemporary society.

This is essential reading for students, researchers, and academics in social psychology, especially those with a specific interest in the concept of trust.

1
Approaches to the investigation of trust

People around the world have an intuitive understanding of trust and use the term with considerable frequency. The frequency of “trust” in the English language is 15,170 and it ranks as the 2,253th most frequently used word in the English language. This is quite remarkable because the list of words in the English language include “a” and “the.” One strength of this observation is that individuals both within and outside of academics usually accept the importance of investigating trust. Certainly, trust plays a crucial role in human functioning according to authors from a wide range of disciplines including criminology, sociology, medicine, psychology, political science, business, and theology (see Rotenberg, 2010).

The difficulty with a pervasive intuitive understanding of trust, though, is that people hold some fixed notion of trust which usually varies across people and is poorly defined (i.e., it is a fuzzy concept). Everyone knows what trust is … or do they? The diversity of intuitive concepts of trust is responsible for the divergent array of research on the topic. As will be discussed in this chapter, some authors define and assess trust in an abstract fashion (e.g., beliefs that others are doing the right thing), whilst others define and assess it in a very particularistic fashion (i.e., the amount of money shared in a given game). Indeed, in some cases authors simply avoid the problem by omitting a conceptualization or definition of trust. This book is guided by the principle that there is a common discourse regarding trust despite the divergence in approaches to it. The book is guided by the belief that there is a commonality in the research on trust, which has been obscured by the diverse terminology and highly focused investigation of it. Clothes may make the man, but underneath the clothes is a person. In effect, terminologies regarding trust are varied but beneath it lies the phenomenon of trust which this book seeks to elucidate. This same belief underlies the basis, domain, and target dimension framework (BDT; Rotenberg, 2010) that my colleagues and I have drawn upon in our investigation of trust.

This chapter will introduce the theories, frameworks, scientific models, and approaches to the investigation of trust. Let me emphasize that the meaning of theories, frameworks, models, and approaches in the literature on trust is often unclear or obscured. The writings on trust in social science are often described as theories – even if they do not strictly conform to the definition of a theory as we now know it. I will adopt the term “theory” in this chapter to designate the writings accordingly with that qualification in mind. It may be important to keep in mind whilst you read this chapter the definitions of theory, framework, scientific model, and approach. Theory is “a broad, natural explanation for a wide range of phenomena. They are concise, coherent, systematic, predictive, and broadly applicable, often integrating and generalizing many hypotheses” (Bradford, 2015). Framework is “an analytical tool which is used to make conceptual distinctions and organize ideas” (The Free Dictionary by Farlex, 2016). The term scientific modelling is “the generation of a physical, conceptual, or mathematical representation of a real phenomenon that is difficult to observe directly” (Study.com, 2016). I will use approach is a given orientation to an investigation that draws upon a specific paradigm, design, and measure. There are four broad categories of formations and conceptualizations of trust: developmental, social, neurological, and organizational.

Developmental

Psychosocial theory

Erikson’s (1963) psychosocial theory marks the origins of contemporary psychology. There is little doubt that this theory is the most commonly cited account of trust in introductory and developmental psychology texts. The theory was a product of the psychoanalytical tradition and it posits that development is composed of a sequence of eight stages of psychosocial development. Each stage entails a conflict that can be resolved in a psychologically healthy versus unhealthy fashion. The resolution at one stage affects the capacity of the individual to resolve subsequent stages in the sequence. The first stage of “Trust vs. Mistrust” is evident from birth to 18 months of age. According to Erikson (1963), during that period trust is an emotion that pertained to an infant’s experiential state of confidence that he/she is valued and his/her needs will be met. According to the theory, an infant seeks out warmth and nurturance from his/her caregiver. If the infant encounters that warmth/nurturance, then he/she attains a basic trust. By contrast, if the infant encounters a lack of warmth/rejection, then he/she attains a basic mistrust. According to the theory, the infant who attains basic trust is able to delay gratification and exert control over his or her bodily functions (e.g., bowels).

Review of psychosocial (Eriksonian) theory

In order to accept this theory, it is necessary a researcher to accept that trust is (a) a unidimensional construct, (b) an emotion, (c) a “basic” form (d) established during infancy, and (e) infancy-established trust profoundly affects the course of development. These are rather substantive propositions. Is a person’s trust fixed during infancy, or can it change? Is it primarily or exclusively an emotion? Precisely how does the acquisition of basic trust vs. distrust affect the resolution of subsequent psychosocial stages and social development? There is a very modest body of research that has yielded support for Eriksonian theory regarding trust (Sneed, Whitbourne, & Culang, 2006; see chapter 6), but some of the propositions are difficult to test and remain unexamined. Some of the implications of this theory for trust are elaborated upon in attachment theory, which will be discussed next.

Attachment theory

Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1979) among others such as Ainsworth (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bell & Ainsworth, 1972) have advanced attachment theory. According to these formulations, infants form different qualities of attachment as a consequence of the nurturance provided by, and sensitivity of, their care provider – primarily their mother. As a product of the interactions and the quality of attachment, the children constructs an Internal Working Model (IWM) that represents in cognition his or her care provider, self, and the relationship between them. The IWM establishes a cognitive-affective framework, which affects later psychosocial functioning. Trust has been conceptualized in the attachment theory and research in two ways. First, trust has been viewed as the infant using the care provider as a secure base which is an integral part of a secure as opposed to an insecure quality of attachment (see Waters & Deane, 1985). Second, it has been proposed that securely as opposed to insecurely attached children develop an IWM which includes social expectations characterized by a sense of trust in others and positive thoughts regarding the intentions of other people’s behaviours (Cohn, 1990; Lieberman, 1977).

Review of attachment theory

The contribution of attachment theory to psychology, notably developmental psychology, is remarkable. A review of it is well beyond the scope of this book. Researchers frequently assert that trust is the cornerstone of attachment theory. The problem posed in examining this assertion, though, is that trust is treated as an inherent part of secure base and that precludes an investigated the extent to which trust as a separate construct contributes to the quality of attachment. Broadly, in order for researchers to examine the causes, correlates, and consequences of trust (including quality of attachment), there needs to be a separate measure of the construct of trust. By this same token, it would not be wise to view trust as responsible for the observed relations found between the quality of attachment and other psychosocial phenomenon.

Furthermore, the assessment of children’s trust within IWM conceptualization is quite limited. As a measure of trust, children judge how much the following descriptors describe them: “I trust my mother” and “I feel that my mother respects my rights” (Kerns, Aspelmeier, Gentzler, & Grabill, 2001). As I will highlight throughout this book, including the term “trust” in items is rather uninformative. Items on scales should assess what individuals commonly regard as trust (see Rotenberg, 2010). However, assessing trust by asking individuals to rate how much they trust begs the question regarding what trust is. The terms in the items are abstract (e.g., “trust” and “respects … rights”) and thus pose the question regarding what individuals (especially children) mean by endorsing the item. Do children of different ages understand the terms “trust” and “respects … rights” in the same way? Would adults from different cultures understand the terms “trust” and “respects … rights” in the same way? The abstract and general qualities of those items make them vulnerable to social desirability, which results in uncertainty regarding whether they accurately assess individuals’ views. Because the trust items share these qualities with other items of the IWM scale, they may contribute to the observation of an internally consistent, single construct IWM scale. In summary, it is unwise to regard trust as one of a subset of items representing a single quality of attachment construct. Also, because the quality of attachment is complex and multidimensional, it is unwise to regard trust as being synonymous with the quality of attachment.

Piagetian theory

Piaget (1965) examined children’s evaluations of lying (among other behaviours) as evidence for moral development. According to Piaget (1965), young children (7 years and under) demonstrate moral realism/objective morality by predominately relying on consequences of an act in deciding morality and failing to take into consideration the intentions underlying that act. Using a promoting questioning methodology with children, Piaget reported that young children failed to sufficiently consider the intentions underlying conveying inaccurate information of a person’s communication. For young children, accidentally conveying inaccurate information (e.g., mistakes) was a lie and morally reprehensible. By contrast, older children showed subjective morality by giving considerable weight to the intentions guiding the communication and morally denigrated communication when it was intended to deceive others. Adults and older children conventionally regard lying as a facet of trust – one that undermines trust in interpersonal relationships (see Peterson, Peterson, & Seeto, 1983).

Review of Piagetian theory

Research has provided an insight into the complexity of evaluations of lying. The research has largely disputed Piaget’s conclusions that there is a simple dichotomous developmental shift in the moral evaluation of lying (Peterson et al., 1983). The research supports the conclusion that young children appreciate that lying depends on the intention to deceive but that children demonstrate a growing sophistication with age in their appreciation of those intentions as a lie (Peterson et al., 1983). Theory of mind (TOM) research has demonstrated that even very young children (4 years of age or even younger) attain first-order false belief abilities and comprehend how people can cause others to hold a belief that given events or internal states are falsely presented (see Wellman, 1990). Furthermore, TOM research shows that children regard intentionally causing false beliefs (deception) as undesirable (Johnson, 1997; Maas, 2008).

Knowledge acquisition theory (KAT)

The KAT by Harris (Harris and Koenig 2006, 2012) posits that trust guides children to acquire a large body of information from the testimony of others. Harris proposed that children acquire knowledge and beliefs regarding of wide range of abstract entities/concepts (religion, scientific evidence, history) from social agents about topics with which the children had no personal contact. Harris (Harris and Koenig 2006, 2012) proposed that children from an early age are not simple consumers of information but actively engage in evaluating its validity.

A highlight of the KAT approach is the distinctive paradigm employed in the research. In KAT studies, 4- and 5-year-old children are conventionally shown figures depicting hybrids of animals that have the features of two animals. The distinctiveness of those features varied and ranged from a complete hybrid (i.e., the features of both animals are equally shown) to the case in which the features of one animal is distinctive and thus predominates over the other. During interactions with the children, the mothers or other persons give the animals names and the child is asked to give a name to the animal. The research has showed, for example, that children selected (1) the name of the animal provided by their mothers when the object was a complete hybrid; (2) the accurate name of the animal when it had more distinguishing features, despite the mothers’ naming; (3) the name of the animal provided by an adult who had a history of accuracy rather than inaccuracy; (4) the name of the animal provided by others when it was expressed as a consensus; and (5) the name of the animal when the race of the informant was the same as the child’s (see Corriveau & Harris, 2010).

Critical review of KAT

This theory does alert researchers to the principle that a substantial amount of children’s knowledge is acquired from the testimony of others and that children employ strategies to assess the accuracy of that testimony before they accept it as an accurate description of the social and non-social world. One limitation with the approach resides in a lack of a conceptualization of trust. Trust is defined by the methodology used and treats it as children’s behavioural dependency on testimony (i.e., labelling). The KAT as a methodology comprises individuals’ (a) information encoding, (b) heuristic accuracy appraisal, and (c) behavioural dependence on the testimony/information.

The preceding limitation is clear when framed within Piagetian theory. For example, it is unclear whether the children in the KAT methodology are inferring that others are demonstrating communication guided by honestly as opposed to dishonestly intended communication. For example, do the children believe that adults with a history of accuracy are mo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1 Approaches to the investigation of trust
• 2 Designs, techniques, and methods in the investigation of trust
• 3 Lying and deception
• 4 Trust and adjustment
• 5 Trust and development
• 6 Trust and romantic relationships
• 7 Trust and health
• 8 Trust and the legal system
• 9 Trust in the workplace
• 10 Trust and politics
• 11 Trust, group relations, and urban terrorism
• 12 Trust and religious faith
• 13 Trust and social media
• 14 Building trust
• 15 Frequently used scales to assess interpersonal trust scales (by alphabetical order of first author)
• Index