Developing an Empirical Test

Abstract

In the following, the perspective of trust and adaptive rationality which was developed in the previous chapters of this book will be put to an empirical test. This test is has a twofold aim: for one, it is designed to gauge the adequacy of an adaptive rationality perspective in trust research from a general standpoint. The “framing” perspective of trust, as developed in this work, is novel in that it merges psychological ideas of flexible information processing, “situated cognition,” and a contingent use of different trusting strategies in trust problems with sociological ideas of a cultural definition of the situation and adaptive rationality.