General Trust Research Articles

From Trust in Source to Trust in Content: How Parents’ Evaluation of Trustworthiness Shifts After First Impressions of an Evidence-Based Parenting Advice App

This study examined how parents’ trust in an evidence-based parenting app is formed before and during initial use. In a sample of 106 parents, the study found that trust was related to intention to use the app. General trust in developmental science predicted trust in the app prior to first use. Transparency was identified as the key factor contributing to changes in trust after first use, while content quality had a marginal effect. Overall, the study highlights the importance of both trust in scientific disciplines and content-related transparency and quality cues for effective digital delivery of parenting advice.

Fake news detection using knowledge graph and graph convolutional network

People will increasingly get expedited and diverse means of accessing news as societies progress. Furthermore, there is a noticeable increase in the prevalence of incorrect and misleading information. Our research is motivated by the significant concerns regarding the detrimental impacts of disinformation on the general public, political stability, and trust in the media. The scarcity of Vietnamese-language datasets can be attributed to the predominant focus of false news detection studies on datasets only in English. Detection investigations of fake news have predominantly relied on supervised machine learning algorithms, which possess notable limitations when confronted with unclassified news articles that are either authentic or untrue. The utilization of Knowledge Graphs (KG) and Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN) holds promise in addressing the constraints of supervised machine learning algorithms. To address these problems, we propose an approach that integrates KG)into the procedure for detecting fake news. We utilize the Vietnamese Fake News Detection dataset (VFND-vietnamese-fake-news), comprising authentic and deceptive news articles from reputable Vietnamese newspapers such as vnexpress, tuoitre, and have been collected from 2018 to 2023. News articles are only labeled as real or fake after experiencing independent verification. The Glove embedding (Global Vectors for Word Representation) is employed to establish a knowledge network for the given dataset. This knowledge graph’s construction is accomplished using the Word Mover’s Distance (WMD) algorithm in conjunction with the K-nearest neighbor approach; GCN approach and the input KG train models to discern between real and fake news. With labeling half of the input dataset, the experimental findings indicate a notable level of accuracy, reaching up to 85%. Our research holds significant importance in identifying fake news, particularly within the context of the Vietnamese language.

Anthropomorphic framing and failure comprehensibility influence different facets of trust towards industrial robots.

Introduction: Utilizing anthropomorphic features in industrial robots is a prevalent strategy aimed at enhancing their perception as collaborative team partners and promoting increased tolerance for failures. Nevertheless, recent research highlights the presence of potential drawbacks associated with this approach. It is still widely unknown, how anthropomorphic framing influences the dynamics of trust especially, in context of different failure experiences. Method: The current laboratory study wanted to close this research gap. To do so, fifty-one participants interacted with a robot that was either anthropomorphically or technically framed. In addition, each robot produced either a comprehensible or an incomprehensible failure. Results: The analysis revealed no differences in general trust towards the technically and anthropomorphically framed robot. Nevertheless, the anthropomorphic robot was perceived as more transparent than the technical robot. Furthermore, the robot's purpose was perceived as more positive after experiencing a comprehensible failure. Discussion: The perceived higher transparency of anthropomorphically framed robots might be a double-edged sword, as the actual transparency did not differ between both conditions. In general, the results show that it is essential to consider trust multi-dimensionally, as a uni-dimensional approach which is often focused on performance might overshadow important facets of trust like transparency and purpose.

Ownership of dogs and cats leads to higher levels of well-being and general trust through family involvement in late adolescence.

Late adolescence is a crucial period during which individuals connect with new communities. Furthermore, their mental health has lasting effects on their overall well-being. Involvement with family and the local community plays a significant role in shaping adolescents' personalities and well-being. Additionally, pets, such as dogs and cats, function as social catalysts and increase interactions with family and the local community. We hypothesized that pet ownership would increase involvement with family and the local community and thereby impact adolescents' personalities and well-being. Therefore, this study investigated whether owning dogs or cats was related to well-being through increased involvement with family and local community members in late adolescence. Data were collected via a questionnaire administered to high school and university students. The questionnaire included questions on basic information about adolescents and their families, pet ownership experience, family and local community involvement, well-being, cultural estrangement inventory, and general trust. Structural equation modeling revealed that adolescent women who owned dogs or cats had higher well-being and general trust through their involvement with their families. Although previous research reported that men who had experienced pet ownership in childhood were more sociable in old age, the effect of pet ownership on men was not observed in this study. During late adolescence, when individuals experience many connections with new communities, the effects of pets may temporarily decrease. Therefore, future cohort studies should examine the effects of pets on each age group.

시위·집회가 사회적 신뢰에 미치는 영향

The higher the level of protests and rallies, the lower the trust of the government along with the general trust accumulated throughout society. In particular, the government's trust was found to be more negatively affected than general trust, resulting in a decrease in the level of trust.
 General trust has been shown to affect the trust of the government in the event of protests and rallies. This can be interpreted that high general trust can have a positive effect on the level of trust of the government even if protests and rallies are high.
 Overall, it can be seen that there is a limit to the short-term effort or temporary institutional to prevent conflict during conflict management. In order to prevent conflicts effectively, it is effective to prevent conflicts by increasing social and cultural trust through long-term planning.

To download or not to download the Covid-19 Track and Trace App? What is more influential in users’ minds?

Objectivesto investigate the role of values in technology acceptance in general and in the context of the UK Covid Track and Trace App. MethodsA survey and interview study was conducted to elicit users’ perceptions of values in general, values in relation to choice of IT products and values which were influenced the decision to download (or not) the NHS Covid-19 Track and Trace App. Other non-value issues such as utility, price and recommendations were considered. ResultsUsers’ value in life differ slightly from those considered important for selecting IT products. For general IT product decisions, functionality, trust and price with values equality, security and sustainability were important. For the Covid-19 App decision two values, helpfulness and equality, with recommendations/trust and operating system compatibility, were the main influences. Interview data indicated that downloader users were motivated by social responsibility and utility – being able to access workplaces and leisure venues – while non-downloaders had little perceived need for the App, combined with mistrust of the App's provenance (NHS and the Government) linked to security and privacy concerns. The implications for values in technology acceptance decisions are discussed.

Drinking Tea with the Neighbors: Informal Clubs, General Trust, and Trustworthiness in Mali

There has been scant empirical evidence linking associational membership to general trust and trustworthiness. This study explores urban youth clubs in Mali and asks: is membership in these groups associated with greater trust and trustworthiness toward society? It leverages 18 months of fieldwork, including 375 group surveys, 2,525 individual surveys, over 1,300 trust games, and transcripts from 66 focus groups. We use propensity score matching to analyze how members and nonmembers play the trust game with strangers. Members are more trustworthy; they return 12% more to their partners than nonmember peers. We do not find a systematic effect of membership on trust. Trustworthiness in the game is also positively correlated with self-reported trust and tolerance as well as real-world behaviors including volunteering and helping friends. Focus group data highlight five mechanisms by which membership fosters general trustworthiness: bonding among diverse members, bridging, public goods provision, socialization, and psychological support.

Trust, Interaction with Neighbors, and Vaccination during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Chinese Data.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted public health and quality of life, leading to government recommendations for vaccination. Using cross-sectional data from a nationwide population-based survey conducted in China (N = 6860), this study aimed to examine the associations between individual vaccine uptake and general trust in others, trust in government, and interaction with neighbors. We conducted a multilevel logistic regression analysis to examine the relevance of these factors at the individual and community levels. Among young adults, higher levels of general trust at both levels were positively associated with vaccination, with odds ratios (OR) of 1.35 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.07, 1.70) and 1.58 (95% CI: 1.14, 2.18), respectively. We also found a positive association between vaccination and community-level interaction with neighbors, with ORs of 1.55 (95% CI: 1.11, 2.17). In contrast, among older individuals, vaccination was positively associated only with individual-level interaction with neighbors, with an OR of 1.55 (95% CI: 1.15, 2.08). The results indicated that vaccine uptake was associated with an individual's views of society and the social environment of the community, with substantial variations between the young and the old. Our findings emphasize the significance of public health measures to strengthen neighborhood interactions among older adults.

Adaptive Coping Strategies at the Time of COVID-19: The Role of Social and General Trust.

Research in the field shows the crucial role of trust in the functioning of many aspects of social life, especially when dealing with emergencies. We report the results of a study (N = 883) carried out in Italy during the first phase of the COVID-19 crisis to assess whether and how social trust (i.e., trust in those who have the authority and responsibility for making decisions, such as the Italian government, the regional government, the Civil Protection, the European Union, the Catholic Church, and the scientific community) and general trust (i.e., trust in the trustworthiness of other individuals, such as Italians and humankind) are associated with the employment of coping strategies in dealing with the challenges of the pandemic. Overall, the results highlight that trust in different authorities and institutions and trust in other human beings are positively associated with the adoption of adaptive coping strategies such as seeking social support, positive reinterpretation and growth, problem-solving orientation, and transcendent orientation. In contrast, they are negatively related to the adoption of maladaptive coping strategies such as avoidance. These findings point out the benefits of various types of trust in helping individuals deal with crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evolution of residents' cooperative behavior in neighborhood renewal: An agent-based computational approach

The cooperative behavior of residents is complex and influenced by their complicated social relationships. This complexity is especially noticeable in neighborhood renewal, so the government does not know how to promote residents' cooperative behavior. Therefore, this study proposes an agent-based model (ABM) to investigate the development of residents' cooperative behavior in neighborhood renewal. Based on a questionnaire survey among residents of old neighborhoods in China, the parameters of ABM were determined in this study. Then, controlled experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of general trust among residents and government control of neighborhood renewal on cooperation patterns in renewal projects. In addition, this study examines the effects of different types of social network structures (small-world, scale-free, and random networks) on the evolution of residents' cooperative behaviors. The simulation results show that when residents' initial willingness to agree to renewal projects is high, their close social relationships need to be managed by the government to achieve better outcomes. Conversely, if initial willingness is low, residents' close relationships may pose a challenge to the government. In addition, government-led renewal projects should be encouraged to a greater extent. This study confirms that the different social network structures have an influence on the development of residents' cooperative behavior. The results of this study provide concrete evidence for understanding the factors that contribute to the emergence of residents' cooperative behavior and for studying the effects of government intervention on neighborhood renewal projects. In addition, the results of this study provide theoretical support for future studies of residents' social network structures.

Psychologiczne uwarunkowania przywiązania do miejsca: zaufanie społeczne, styl przywiązania i lęk. Badanie longitudinalne w okresie pandemii COVID-19

The aim of this study was to explore the subject of place attachment and connected factors (such as social trust, attachment style and anxiety) in the context of enforced isolation caused by world pandemic COVID-19. For this purpose a longitudinal study was conducted, in the first part of which 127 people were examined, and 35 in second. During the survey were used: Place Attachment Scale, General Trust Scale, Relationship Questionnaire, and STAI -X1 Questionnaire. The study confirmed the negative relationship between place attachment and anxiety: the higher the level of anxiety, the lower the strength of place attachment. This relationship was also found to be stable over time and significant during both the first and third lockdown.

Impacts of Store Trust Antecedents on Willingness to Disclose Personal Data in Online Shopping

Personal data disclosure is crucially important to modern business, and specifically – to online stores. It is largely predicted by the willingness to disclose personal data that significantly varies among emerging economies due to impacts of numerous factors. One of the important factors that impacts willingness to disclose personal data in online shopping is trust in an online store. However, the importance of trust in a store partly occurs because it mediates effects of other antecedents. This study conceptualizes three groups of important antecedents: personal, infrastructural and store-related factors. The study tests indirect effects of the most typical factors from each group: general trust (personal factor), legal regulations (infrastructural factor) and presence of an off-line selling channel in addition to the online channel offered by a store (e-store factor) on willingness to disclose personal data online. The findings show that all these factors, mediated by store trust, have significant positive effects on willingness to disclose personal data. The findings contribute to the knowledge of the groups of factors that impact willingness to disclose personal data online and help to set directions for future research.

A socio-economic examination of participation in socially innovative energy projects

This paper aims to examine the role of citizen investment in scaling up renewable generation through participating or investing in social innovation in energy. It presents an explorative study demonstrating results of large-scale surveys of the general public across twelve countries (11 European plus the USA), representing the views of over 10,000 individuals. These surveys focus on three types of innovative energy business models, namely: energy cooperatives, crowdfunding and peer-to-peer platforms. In particular, we study the socioeconomic, demographic and attitudinal attributes of self-reported early participants in similar energy organizations, and also separately among those who express an unwillingness to participate in the above business models. The findings suggest that factors such as age, education, gender, risk preferences, previous general investment experience and trust in the carbon saving claims of organizations are important in explaining both self-reported previous and future participation in energy initiatives.

Social trust and COVID-appropriate behavior

Introduction: General trust and trust in various social institutions/agents are argued to positively influence the outcome, more so, in a crisis. Mitigating a crisis requires actions from individuals, family, friends, co-workers, various policymaking, and implementing agencies, media, and other agencies with whom people interact. In the COVID-19 situation, people individuals did not have a choice but to access essential services even with the risk of infection. Personal experiences also guide individuals' trust in various social groups and are responsible for taking individual action of protecting themselves in the pandemic. To what extent people trusted various social groups and observed appropriate behavior is investigated in this research. Methods: Responses were collected through a structured, web-based questionnaire where respondents self-reported their trust in various social agents and the extent to which they observed COVID-appropriate behavior. Respondents primarily belonged to the eastern part of India. Results: This study finds significant demographic differences in observing appropriate behavior leading to an identification of a vulnerable group. Second, trust in the inner group (family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers among others) is least important whereas trust in professionals and administrative institutions is the most important. Trust in the central government, media, and politicians among others is counterproductive to observing the appropriate behavior. Conclusion: People repose higher trust in professionals and administrative institutions in a crisis situation. Professional and administrative leadership helps in more effective crisis management leading to better behavioral compliance of the public. Any other leadership may be ineffective or counter-productive.

Лишение статуса адвоката как последствие его привлечения к уголовной ответственности

In the article, the author reviews consequences of bringing a lawyer to liability in the form of deprivation of the right of representation in court in the lawyer status. Special attention is paid to an analysis of the latest legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation with regards to the disproportion in the establishment of a permanent prohibition against carrying out of attorney activities in the event that an attorney is acknowledged guilty of an intentional crime. The author uses such analysis as a basis to conclude that the acknowledgment of this provision of the Federal Law on Legal Practice and Advocacy as unconstitutional is controversial. On the one hand, the government has solved the legal uncertainty and introduced constitutional protection of labor rights of disbarred citizens. But on the other hand, the legal community has lost a very powerful means of preventive and to some extent punitive impact on its representatives, whose intentional crimes did not only cause damage to their reputation but undermine the general trust of the society in the institution of advocacy.

Team at Your Service: Investigating Functional Specificity for Trust Calibration in Automated Driving with Conversational Agents

Functional specificity describes the degree to which operators can successfully calibrate their trust toward different subsystems of a machine. Only a few works have addressed this issue in the context of automated vehicles. Previous studies suggest that drivers have issues distinguishing between different subsystems, which leads to low functional specificity. To counter, this article presents a prototypical design where different in-vehicle subsystems are portrayed by independent conversational agents. The concept was evaluated in a user study where participants had to supervise a level 2 automated vehicle while reading and communicating with the conversational agents in the car. It was hypothesized that a clear differentiation between subsystems could allow drivers to better calibrate their trust. However, our results, based on subjective trust scales, monitoring, and driving behavior, cannot confirm this assumption. In contrast, functional specificity was high among participants of the study, and they based their situational and general trust ratings mainly on the perceptions of the driving automation system. Still, the experiment contributes to issues of trust and monitoring and concludes with a list of relevant findings to support trust calibration in supervisory control situations.

Examining the Pathways from General Trust Through Social Connectedness to Subjective Wellbeing

The broad conceptualisation of wellbeing has allowed researchers to establish subjective wellbeing as a valid indicator of social development. However, changing social patterns, norms, and values suggest changes in how social determinants may predict subjective wellbeing. The current analysis tests a serial mediation hypothesis in which social participation and social resources mediate the effect of general trust on subjective wellbeing.Data from 8725 participants were pooled from the German part of the European Social Survey (ESS) Wave 10. Structural models were estimated to access the path from general trust to subjective wellbeing (SWB). Three separate mediation analyses were performed to test (1) the indirect effect of general trust on SWB through social participation, (2) through social resources and (3) through social participation and social resources. A full-mediation model reveals the direct and indirect paths predicting SWB through general trust, social participation, and social resources. Gender, age, education, and household size were included as control variables.The full-mediation model suggests significant results for direct paths from general trust to social participation, social resources, and SWB. Direct paths from social participation to social resources and SWB were also significant. However, the path from social resources to SWB became non-significant.Results highlight general trust as a critical predictor of SWB. The finding that social participation is significant while social resources are not significant in a mediation model suggests that social participation directly affects wellbeing, independent of the effect of social resources. This highlights the importance of social participation in promoting wellbeing.

Compliance with Public Health Orders: The Role of Trust, Representation, and Expertise

Governments rely on citizen compliance to implement policies. Yet, in the current climate where citizens express low levels of trust in government, gaining compliance can prove challenging. Scholarship suggests other factors that might promote compliance even in the absence of trust. We examine two: expertise and descriptive representation across race, gender, and partisanship. We experimentally activate general (dis)trust in government and use a conjoint experiment to examine multiple factors that might shape citizens’ willingness to comply with and trust government guidance related to COVID-19. We find that shared partisanship and consultation with experts have the largest effects. We also see an effect of shared racial identity on compliance for Black Americans, at least when trust is relatively low. As we consider the role of trust, expertise, and descriptive representation across race, gender, and partisanship simultaneously, the results offer important insights into factors that underpin citizens’ willingness to comply with government mandates. Our results have important real-world implications, highlighting the importance of bipartisan responses to crises as well as ensuring racial representation in government. They also demonstrate that explicitly involving experts in decision-making processes increases citizens’ willingness to comply with policy.

Trans-atlantic (mis)trust in perspective: asymmetry, abandonment and alliance cohesion

This article clarifies the role of trust in alliances with a focus on NATO. We bridge IR scholarship on trust and alliance theory by dealing with trust as a central factor in maintaining alliance cohesion and longevity. NATO has, throughout its history, been characterised by an asymmetric trusting relationship, with Europe being more vulnerable to defection than its American counterpart. This means that a fear of abandonment, intrinsic to the structure of reciprocal commitment in all alliances, has been felt differently on the opposite sides of the Atlantic, with implications for how specific crises have led to a fluctuation in (mis)trust. Whereas the Europeans have harboured mistrust regarding the longevity of the US commitment and extended deterrence, the Americans have doubted the Europeans’ faithfulness to US leadership and willingness to share the alliance’s burdens. Simultaneously, general trust – cultivated by shared interests, institutions, interdependence and converging identities – has bound the allies together. The article then uses these insights to analyse the Trump presidency, which marked an historic spike in mistrust between the US and the Europeans. Despite the unforeseen tumult, the presidency did not result in the definitive collapse of trust in the trans-Atlantic relationship, let alone NATO.

Obedience to authorities is not unconditional: Differential effects of COVID‐19 threat on three facets of RWA in Poland and Germany

AbstractCollective authoritarian responses to threat might differ depending on whether people trust collective authorities in reducing threat. Thus, we tested the differential effects of epidemic threat on three facets of right‐wing authoritarianism, in Germany (a country with high authorities' efficacy in responses to COVID‐19) and Poland (low authorities' efficacy context). Two representative sample longitudinal studies performed in Poland (N = 892) and Germany (N = 883) showed that in Germany feelings of COVID‐19 threat explained increases in authoritarian submission and (to a lesser extent) authoritarian aggression, whereas in Poland such feelings of threat explained changes in authoritarian aggression and conventionalism after the pandemic, but did not alter authoritarian submission. These findings suggest that specific authoritarian reactions to threat (submissive vs. conventionalist) might depend on the general trust in authorities' ability to respond to crises.