The Socio-cognitive Dynamics of Trust: Does Trust Create Trust?

Abstract

We¹ will examine in this paper three crucial aspects of trust dynamics:

a) How A’s trusting B and relying on it in situation ω can actually (objectively) influnce B’s trustworthiness within ω . Either trust is a self-fulfilling prophecy that modifies the probability of the predicted event; or it is a self-defeating strategy by negatively influencing the events. And also how A can be aware of and take into account the effect of its own decision in the very moment of that decision.

b) How trust creates a reciprocal trust, and distrust elicits distrust; but also vice versa: how A’s trust in B could induce lack of trust or distrust in B towards A, while A’s diffdence can make B more trustful in A. And also how A can be aware of and take into account this effect of its own decision in the very moment of that decision.

c) How diffuse trust diffuses trust (trust atmosphere), that is how A’s trusting B can influence C trusting B or D, and so on.

Those phenomena are very crucial in human societies (market, groups, states), however we claim that they are also very fundamental in computer mediated organizations, interactions (like Electronic Commerce), cooperation (Computer Supported Cooperative Work), etc. and even in Multi-Agent Systems with autonomous agents.

This paper has been partially developed within the European Project Alfebiite (A Logical Framework for Ethical Behaviour between Infohabitants in the Information Trading Economy of the Universal Information Ecosystem): IST-1999-10298; and in part by the Ticca Project (joint research venture between the Italian National Research Council -Cnr- and Provincia Autonoma di Trento).