The Dynamics of Trust - Emergence and Destruction

We study the emergence and evolution of trust in larger societies. We focus on the thin notion of trust, that is the trust needed for interacting with hitherto unknown individuals encountered for just a single interaction. Our model builds upon well established theoretical knowledge of the determinants of trust. These works identify parameters such as the existence of networks, the level of mobility or the percentage of trust-abusing agents in a society. While the influence of each of these factors individually is well-established by empirical work, a precise account of the interplay of these factors is lacking. To bridge this gap, we devise a multi agent computer simulation that allows a fine grained analysis of the dynamic processes governing the emergence of trust and its dependencies upon these parameters. We model agents using a bayesian learning framework about the value of trust, taking both individual and social information into account.