A theoretical model describing interpersonal trust in close relationships is presented. Three dimensions of trust are identified, based on the type of attributions drawn about a partner's motives. These dimensions are also characterized by a developmental progression in the relationship. The validity of this theoretical perspective was examined through evidence obtained from a survey of a heter...

This paper examines conceptions of trust among three groups of respondents diagnosed with either breast cancer, Lyme disease or mental illness. Interviews were carried out using an open-ended interview guide to explore how patients made assessments of trust in their doctors and health care plans. The guide followed a conceptual approach that asked questions about competence, agency/fiduciary re...

Social psychologists conceptualize trust in a manner that differs from conceptualizations used by marketing researchers to date. Building from the social psychology literature, we posit that interpersonal trust in consumer-level service relationships has cognitive and affective dimensions. We examine the relative impact of service provider expertise, product performance, firm reputation, satisf...

This study attempts to understand how people can promote cognition-based trust in virtual worlds such as Second Life. The effects of the two presentation formats on avatars’ appearance as well as the moderating role of the disclosure of offline identity were examined in a laboratory experiment. The experimental results show that (1) a more sophisticated avatar leads to higher cognition-based tr...

Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce suffers from consumers’ lack of trust. This may be partly attributable to the lack of face-to-face interpersonal exchanges that provide trust behavior in conventional commerce. It was proposed that initial trust may be built by simulating face-toface interaction. To test this, an extensive laboratory-based experiment was conducted to assess the initial trus...

Two experiments explored differences in depersonalized trust (trust toward a relatively unknown target person) across cultures. Based on a recent theoretical framework that postulates predominantly different bases for group behaviors in Western cultures versus Eastern cultures, it was predicted that Americans would tend to trust people primarily based on whether they shared category memberships...

In this paper we raise the question whether technological artifacts can properly speaking be trusted or said to be trustworthy. First, we set out some prevalent accounts of trust and trustworthiness and explain how they compare with the engineer’s notion of reliability. We distinguish between pure rational-choice accounts of trust, which do not differ in principle from mere judgments of reliabi...

S argue that direct knowledge about distant colleagues is crucial for fostering trust in global collaboration. However, their arguments focus mainly on how trust accrues from knowledge about distant collaborators’ personal characteristics, relationships, and behavioral norms. We suggest that an equally important trust mechanism is “reflected knowledge,” knowledge that workers gain about the per...

This research explores the potential determinants of trust in newly formed virtual teams to better inform the choice of communication media for virtual emergency response groups for which interpersonal trust is crucial. Results of a laboratory experiment indicate that the way that communicants view their teammates and themselves as part of that team is significantly correlated with the level of...