Trust, choice, and self-preservation: a computational approach

Abstract

Trust tends to be described through the lens of a rational choice of a trustor driven by the trustworthiness of a trustee. This, however, does not exhaust scenarios where people seem to be comfortable trusting without having an actual choice or not trusting while having a selection of potential trustees. This paper proposes that there should be another force at work that only expresses itself through the rationality in situations of choice. It is the self-preservation that strongly influences our decisions, specifically when choices seem to diminish. Ignoring this force makes the theory of trust incomplete. This paper brings this area of social behaviour closer to computational trust by proposing a unifying model that builds on theories of social systems. It focuses specifically on the containment of complexity and the associated risk to self-preservation, where trust is not an option but a necessity. The model, by being both simple and expressive, can computationally explain several phenomena associated with trusting in situations where self-preservation may be under a threat. This is further demonstrated by several use cases.