Trusting beliefs: a functional measurement study

ABSTRACT

Trust is a fundamental aspect of everyday life. Several authors define trust as the wish to depend on another entity and split the concept of trust into several interconnected components such as trusting beliefs (e.g., benevolence, competence, honesty, and predictability), trusting intentions, trusting behaviors, disposition to trust, and institution-based trust. According to McKnight, Cummings, and Chervany’s (1998) model, beliefs yield behavioral intentions, which in turn are manifested in behavior. In the present research, we applied functional measurement to explain trust-related judgments in terms of information integration among different beliefs. Our results suggest that averaging models could help to describe the observed judgments in terms of beliefs and to comprehend the role and relevance of each belief in a variety of social contexts(AU)