The Social Construction of Trust

Abstract

In the preceding chapters, we have approached the phenomenon of trust from the trustor’s perspective, relating it to individual adaptive rationality, interpretation, and choice. In other words, we have restricted ourselves to an analysis of trust as residing in the psychological state of the trustor who “passively” responds to the environment and seeks a solution to the trust problem. Importantly, the immediate situation and its context define the relevance of trust-related knowledge. By providing the situational objects and cues that govern the processing mode and trigger the activation of associated frames and scripts, they serve as a basis for interpretation and choice and the context dependent adjustment of rationality.