Choice

February 9, 2010, 7:22 am • Tags: , ,

icon_06Trust is a mental state, which cannot be measured directly. Confidence in the results of trusting may be measured through behavior. Placement of trust allows actions that otherwise are not possible. If the person in whom trust is placed is trustworthy, then the trustor will be better off than if he or she had not trusted. Conversely, if the trustee is not trustworthy, then the trustor will be worse off than if he or she had not trusted.

Trust is a mental state, which cannot be measured directly. Confidence in the results of trusting may be measured through behavior, or alternatively, one can measure self-reported trust, with all the caveat surrounding that method. Trust may be considered a moral choice, as in the legend of Damon and Pythias, or at least a heuristic, allowing the human to deal with complexities that outgo rationalistic reasoning. In this case, machine-human trust is meaningless, because computers have no moral sense and rely on rational computations.

In the social sciences, the subtleties of trust are a subject of ongoing research. In sociology and psychology the degree to which one party trusts another is a measure of belief in the honesty, benevolence and competence of the other party. Based on the most recent research, a failure in trust may be forgiven more easily if it is interpreted as a failure of competence rather than a lack of benevolence or honesty.

The substantive conflict in the social sciences is whether trust is entirely internal, and only confidence is observable, or whether trust behaviors, and self reported levels of trust, can meaningfully measure trust in the absence of coercion. Note however that many languages (e.g. Dutch or German) do not distinguish between the words trust and confidence, which complicates the issue. The distinction between trust and confidence is an unsolved issue in current trust and confidence research.