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Going back to the source: Why do people trust each other?

Why do we trust people? More precisely, on what basis do we trust people? Reinhard Bachmann’s paper, and my response here, are both concerned with this enduring yet curiously neglected question. Many, perhaps most, trust scholars’ instinctive answer would be: we trust based on an assessment of the other party’s trustworthiness. They might then invoke the three dimensions of trustworthiness in Mayer, Davis and Schoorman’s (1995) widely cited model: ability, benevolence and integrity [hereafter ‘ABI’]. Standard models of trust then proceed as follows: assuming this assessment is broadly positive, we are likely to feel Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt and Camerer’s ‘willingness to render ourselves vulnerable’ (1998, p. 395). However, many argue, persuasively in my view, that this ‘psychological state’ what Li (2007, 2008) calls ‘trust-asattitude’ is not enough for trust to actually happen. There must be a behavioural manifestation for trust to be made ‘real’ (Schoorman, Mayer, & Davis, 2007): what Li (2007, 2008) calls ‘trust-as-choice’. We demonstrate trust by taking a risk with respect to our dealings with the other party (Mayer et al., 1995). The outcome from doing so then feeds back information which updates the assessment on the other’s trustworthiness, and so trust’s cyclical dynamic continues. The first point on which I differ from Bachmann’s argument is that I believe this basic sequence to be a universal dynamic, common to all trust encounters. Indeed, I would argue that any trust encounter anywhere in the world, in any country, in any sector, and in any relationship can probably be interpreted accurately using this staged model: there is always an assessment (however thorough) of the other party’s trustworthiness which informs a preparedness to be vulnerable that, in genuine cases of trust, leads to a risk-taking act. The results of the trusting encounter update the foundational assessment. In other words, there is only one essential ‘trust experience’, and this sequence is it. Within our literature, however, scholars have proposed a number of different types of trust: ‘contract trust’, ‘competence trust’ and ‘goodwill trust’ (Sako, 1992), ‘deterrence-based’, ‘calculus-based’, ‘knowledge-based’ and ‘identification-based trust’ (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996). These different types are held to have distinctive origins and dynamics, and an unspoken assumption seems to be that people deploy different types in dealings with others, as circumstances and personal preferences dictate. In depicting interaction-based trust and institution-based trust as qualitatively distinguishable and uniquely suited to particular circumstances,