Definitions of Trust: From Conceptual Components to the General Core - Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational Model - page 14

important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party' (Mayer
et al. , 1995).
This definition of trust as the decision to make oneself vulnerable deserves some consid-
eration. On the one hand, it is strange that it focuses only on trust as a decision, without
considering the background of such a decision, and thus missing basic uses of the term like in
'I trust John but not enough'.
On the other hand, in our view it identifies and expresses very well an important property
of trust, but without providing a really good definition of the general phenomenon. To begin
with, insofar as the definition is mainly applicable to trust as decision and action, it seems to
allude to vulnerability only in relation to a transition of state, whereas one might also say that
a disposition of trust or a relation of trust is enough to make the trustor vulnerable, although
in a static sense, not as state-transition.
More importantly, the idea of equating trust with self-decided vulnerability is, as a definition,
both too broad and too vague, since there are a lot of states (including psychological states)
and acts that share the same property of making oneself vulnerable to others; for example,
lack of attention and concentration , excess of focus and single-mindedness , tiredness , wrong
beliefs about dangers (e.g. concerning exposition to an enemy, being hated, inferiority, etc.),
and so on. Moreover, some of these states and acts can be due to a decision of the subject:
for example, the decision to elicit envy, or to provoke someone. In all these cases, the subject
is deciding to make themselves vulnerable to someone or something else, and yet no trust is
involved at all.
Therefore, the problem is not solved by defining trust as the decision to make oneself
vulnerable, although one should characterize trust in such a way that can explain and predict
these important effects and consequences of trust. For instance, it is worth emphasizing all the
dangers implicit in the decision to trust, in terms of:
Considering sufficient and reliable enough the current information about the trustee and about
the relevant situation. This implies that the trustor does not perceive too much uncertainty
and ignorance on these matters, although their estimate is, of course, subjective and fallible
(and ignorance or wrong certainty can be dangerous indeed).
Having enough good evaluations and predictions about the trustee; but these might be
wrong, or the negative evaluations and foreseen dangers can be poorly estimated, and false
predictions based upon misleading evaluations may be extremely noxious.
Relying upon Y , counting on Y to help realize a given goal; i.e. for the realization of goal G ,
agent X depends (accepts, decides to depend) on Y . This - analytically in our model- gives
Y the power of frustrating X 's goal, thus X makes oneself vulnerable to Y for G ; moreover
the actual decision to trust further increases X 's dependence.
So, in order to explain and predict trust-related vulnerability and the fact that the trustor's
welfare comes to depend upon the trustee's action (as mentioned in Gambetta's definition), a
model of trust - as we said - must at least integrate:
beliefs about the trustee's internal attitudes and future conduct (more or less complete; more
or less grounded on evidence and rationally justified; more or less correct);
the subjective propensity of the trustor to accept a given degree of uncertainty and of
ignorance, and a given perceived amount of risk;