General Trust and confidence

Completed Research Project

Summary / Zusammenfassung: Trust is an important factor enabling cooperation. There is little agreement among researchers, however, on how trust should be studied. Based on a comprehensive review of the trust literature a ”dual-mode model of social trust and confidence” is proposed. Trust and confidence are separate, but, under some circumstances, interacting sources of cooperation. Trust is based on value similarity, and confidence is based on performance. According to our model, judged similarity between an observer’s currently active values and the values attributed to others determines social trust. Thus, the basis for trust is a judgment that the person to be trusted would act as the trusting person would. Interpretation of the other’s performance influences confidence. Both social trust and confidence have an impact on people’s willingness to cooperate (e.g., accept electromagnetic fields or EMF in the neighborhood). The postulated model will be tested utilizing survey methods and experiments.

Publications / Publikationen: Siegrist, M., Earle, T.C. & Gutscher, H. (Eds.) (2007). Trust in Cooperative Risk Management. London: Earthscan

Project Leadership and Contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte

PD Dr. Michael Siegrist (Project Leader)	siegrist@sozpsy.uzh.ch
Prof. Dr. Heinz Gutscher	gutscher@sozpsy.uzh.ch
Dr. Carmen Keller