Trust in everyday life

Abstract

Although trust plays a pivotal role in many aspects of life, very little is known about the manifestation of trust and distrust in everyday life. In this work, we integrated several prior approaches to trust and investigated the prevalence and key determinants of trust (vs. distrust) in people’s natural environments, using preregistered experience-sampling methodology. Across more than 4,500 social interactions from a heterogeneous sample of 427 participants, results showed high average levels of trust, but also considerable variability in trust across contexts. This variability was attributable to aspects of trustee perception, social distance, as well as 3 key dimensions of situational interdependence: conflict of interests, information (un)certainty, and power imbalance. At the dispositional level, average everyday trust was shaped by general trust, moral identity, and zero-sum beliefs. The social scope of most trust-related traits, however, was moderated by social distance: Whereas moral identity buffered against distrusting distant targets, high general distrust and low social value orientation amplified trust differences between close vs. distant others. Furthermore, a laboratory-based trust game predicted everyday trust only with regard to more distant but not close interaction partners. Finally, everyday trust was linked to self-disclosure and to cooperation, particularly in situations of high conflict between interaction partners’ interests. We conclude that trust can be conceptualized as a relational hub that interconnects the social perception of the trustee, the relational closeness between trustor and trustee, key structural features of situational interdependence, and behavioral response options such as self-disclosure.

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