Trust Part I. "I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you"

Trust, its role and significance to our society is obvious. I wanted to share some well-known research and opinions on the meaning, formation and attributes of trust. A discussion that will carry over into cloud computing.



First things first...do you trust your life-long friend to keep a life-long secret? Do you trust your car dealer to complete the schedule oil change, tire rotation and that oh so mandatory surprise problem by the promised 4:00 PM pick-up time? Do you trust your employer to give you the 10% raise the year after a recession?


Trust is a resource. You give it, you take it and you create something out of it. In almost all situations where trust comes into play there is uncertainty such as the role of emotion in the early stages of a relationship.


Why are some people a good judge of character, while others can make money even when the stock market is tanking, or millions of others are willing to buy and sell from each other without a face to face introduction? Its because each of these people are able to deal in varying outcomes with that resource called trust. 

So what is the definition of trust? There is little agreement about the exact, let alone conceptual, meaning of trust. Trust has been defined as:

• a behavior (Zand, 1972)
• an attitude (Kegan & Rubenstein, 1973)
• a confidence (Cohen, 1966)
• an expectancy (Rotter, 1980; Scanzoni, 1979)
• a belief or set of beliefs (Barber, 1983; Bromiley & Cummings, 1995; Rotter, 1967)
• a dispositional variable (Rosenberg, 1957; Rotter, 1967, 1980)
• a situational variable (Johnson-George & Swap, 1982)
• a structural variable (Fox, 1974; Lewis & Weigert, 1985a,b)
• a social agency relationship variable ... you get the picture

Rousseu et.al. (1998) does a good job of boiling the meaning of trust into a receipe that is one part risk and one part interdependance:

• Risk occurs where information is unavailable, the future outcome is unpredictable, and where
  there is a possibility of loss or harm (Chiles & McMackin, 1996; Lewis & Weigert,
  1985).
• Interdependance: where one party relies on another, or perhaps many others, to achieve desired results

More in Part II


PS: the quote in the Title is by Friedrich Nietzsche.