Analytical Essay on the Conceptualization and Measurement of Trust and Trustworthiness PDF

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Analytical Essay on the Conceptualization and Measurement of Trust and Trustworthiness

Uncertainty about the definition of trust and trustworthiness, its measurement, and relatedness with other concepts in the social sciences hinders to gather scientific knowledge. The general conception, however, based on previous literature and studies, exists which may help for future research as a starting point. By using both concepts at empirical cases, it is easier to differentiate the concepts and their attributes from each other, besides providing different other concepts of trust which can be measured and improved. The article “Conceptualizing and Measuring Trust and Trustworthiness” by Paul C. Bauer (2014) is the study that investigates all the above mentioned concerns of these particular concepts. According to the author, there are three main problems and resulting drawbacks for the concept of trust and trustworthiness, first of which is those concepts have numerous amount of definition and all of them are vague conceptions and that puts scholar in a bad situation. That follows the second problem, which is a lack of concept- measurement consistency (Goertz 2006: 95) in the definitions of trust and trustworthiness which makes it difficult to relate them with other concepts. Last but not the least, the difference between the concepts of trust and trustworthiness itself is obscure (Hardin 2002), the definition of trustworthiness gaining less attention from the scholars. The author, Paul C. Bauer attempts to answer to the questions of how should we define (i.e. what are) and how can we measure the concepts of trust and

trustworthiness? in his study. He looks for the previous works to systemize all the definitions for trust and trustworthiness, seeks for real cases to apply those conceptions, classifies attributes to improve the universal theory, points out problems, similarities and differences with measurement and suggests solutions. Different authors agree on several notions regarding to the conceptions. Three elements have been considered in defining the concepts of trust and trustworthiness: a truster, person A, a trustee, person B, and X behaviour which A trusts B for. (Baier 1986, Hardin 1992: 154, Hardin 2002, Luhmann 1979: 27, Sztompka 1999: 55) Additional element would cause complexity, they can be seen as a causal factor without belonging to the concepts themselves. Second notion is that, both concepts can be think of probabilities, as Gambetta (1988: 217) asserts that trust “is a particular level of the subjective probability with which an agent assesses [...] another agent”. It is a belief that a trustee will behave trustworthily. (Coleman, 1990) That idea has been criticized by Nooteboom 2002: 39-41 on the grounds that we do not make that probabilities with rationality. Third proposal is temporal dimension to the concept. While normally trust describes (potentially wrong) expectations about a trustee’s future behavior whereas trustworthiness describes the real probability of this future behavior. (McKnight and Chervany 1996: 34). Finally, a useful conception should be flexible enough as to encompass all sorts of cases. The author of the article displays unified definition of trust and trustworthiness, based on discussed notions, “Trust PAi is Ai’s subjective estimation of the trustworthiness PBj of Bj. PBj is the objective probability that Bj displays behavior XT preferred by Ai rather than X¬T .” (Bauer, 2014) When we investigate trust and trustworthiness, its causes and consequences, the study has to be limited to certain cases that encompass the universe of all possible As, Bs, Xs. Choices

come with the trade-off. Our choice depends on the relevance of the respective expectations and behaviors for the system we study. When theorizing and measuring trust and trustworthiness, we should listen to Barber’s advise (1983: 17) “always specify the social relationship or social system of reference”. In order to reason what behaviours, what Xs are relevant, we have to know whether A and B is members of societies, families or companies. The concepts of trust and trustworthiness should not be confused with their attributes, divided with internal and external factors and their consequences. First, trust as an expectation is based on thought processes and emotions that influence truster’ estimate of the probability of trustee with regard to XT, behaviours. Some As may rely on more complex thought processes, others might rely on simplistic stereotypes or biases. For example, when we estimate the trustworthiness of a close friend or a family member, emotions may bias our judgment. Second, trustworthiness is the objective probability, and thought processes and emotions influence that probability. To sum up, there is a distinction between external factors, such as law system, our trust on it and internal factors, thought processes and emotions. Trust and trustworthiness are often mixed with other conceptions. Some sees trust as an expectation, rather a decision or a behavior. Despite, Hardin (2002: 58-60) sees that difference obviously distinct from each other, most researchers mix expectations and consequent decisions or behaviors in their theories and definitions. Second mismatch is about usage of the trust and confidence as synonyms, while the term confidence represents a narrower understanding of trust. (Luhmann, 1988) Individual with “low confidence” would still be located somewhere in the upper range of the trust scale. (Deutsch, 1960). Thirdly, while Cook, Hardin and Levi (2005: 33f), Hardin (2002: 89f) and Lewicki and Brinsfield (2012) treats trust and distrust as two distinct concepts, Bauer

(2014) says “it seems to make sense to measure trust and distrust/mistrust on one single subjective probability scale, and treats distrust as antonym of trust.”

Finally,

risk

and

uncertainty can be defined in relation to trust and trustworthiness. Responding to the two concepts there are two types of risk, subjective risk of trust and objective risk of trustworthiness and also, individuals may be uncertain about their judgment of a trustee. The paper illustrates different trust concepts based on data from Jstor (Burns et al. 2009) and Google Books (Michel et al. 2011). Generalized trust is a standard estimate regarding to others’ trustworthiness. (Uslaner, 2002) and that is close to Coleman’s idea that a person has a “standard estimate of the probability of trustworthiness for the average person meets” (Coleman, 1990) Besides generalized trust there are many other conceptual products some of which became very popular, such as social trust and interpersonal trust that are synonyms in that in both cases the trusters as well as the trustees comprise human individuals or groups. (Rotter, 1967) Another widely used concept is political trust designating cases in which the trustee belongs to the political sphere. (Hetherington, 2012) Particularized trust which is often regarded as the “opposite” of generalized trust, is defined as “placing faith only in our own kind” (Uslaner, 2002) Yamagishi and Yamagishi (1994) also coined knowledge-based trust that “is limited to particular objects (people or organizations)” whom one knows. Thick trust and thin trust categorize different trustees B according to the social distance to the truster (Putnam, 2000) Finally, there is the concept of identity, group or category- based trust (Brewer 1981). Finally, Uslaner (2002) contrasts moralistic trust with strategic trust. The former is “a general outlook on human nature and mostly does not depend upon personal experiences or upon the assumption that others are trustworthy, as strategic trust does”

Naturally, the diversity of definitions of trust and trustworthiness did not lead to a common way of measuring the two concepts. Most empirical studies are characterized by a gap between definition and measurement. This concept-measurement inconsistency has also led to a misfit between theories and the empirical data they are tested with. In general, there is a distinction between survey research that relies on various survey questions to measure trust and sometimes trustworthiness and “experimental” research that relies on observing participants’ behavior in games. One challenge, external validity, belongs to the fact that the As and Bs whose trust/trustworthiness we measure in these games might not be representative of our target population such as a country’s population or humans in general (Henrich, 2010). The second challenge is that, it is not sure whether a person’s trusting behavior/trustworthiness as measured in the game is correlated with a person’s trusting behavior/trustworthiness with regard to other X i.e. other real life trust situations. Trust has a long history of measurement in surveys with items tapping trust in different categories such as individuals, governments and so on. Rotter (1967) proposed multiple items to measure interpersonal trust. Today, studies in sociology and political science largely focus on the concept of generalized trust and are largely based on a single survey item. Another important concept, political trust, has been investigated relying on a different set of questions. Stokes (1962) who was interested in tapping basic evaluative orientations towards government, was the first to introduce survey questions measuring political trust. Measurement of trust in surveys is problematic for the following reasons: First, all too often survey questions on trust do not seem to result from a clear conception. Most questions fail to acknowledge that the concept requires the specification of three elements - a truster, a trustee and some behavior of the trustee. Second,

many trust questions are too vague regarding the trustee. These problems also matter for survey measures of trustworthiness which face one big additional challenge - social desirability.

References:

Adcock, Robert and David Collier. “Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research.” American Political Science Review 95:3 (2001): 529-546.

Paul C. Bauer, "Conceptualizing and Measuring Trust and Trustworthiness", June 2014...