Trust Decisions Research Articles

Gain-loss framing effects in dilemmas of trust and reciprocity

How do trust and reciprocity decisions change when outcomes are framed in terms of potential losses (vs gains)? In two studies, with 7464 trust decisions from 359 participants and 2723 reciprocity decisions from 221 participants, we find that loss framing increases mean-level trust, but has no effect on mean-level reciprocity. Additionally, loss framing changes how decisions are made: In the domain of losses, trustors and trustees become less calculative — trust decisions involving losses are less sensitive to changes in expected value and reciprocity decisions are less sensitive to the financial temptation to betray trust. Critically, these changes in the process of decision-making are more pronounced when people interact with a human (vs computer) partner, pointing to uniquely social consequences of loss framing. The present results contribute to our understanding of the factors that shape trust and reciprocity, and emphasize that interpersonal processes play an important but under examined role in gain-loss framing effects.

Split-Second Trustworthiness Detection From Faces in an Economic Game.

Economic interactions often imply to gauge the trustworthiness of others. Recent studies showed that when making trust decisions in economic games, people have some accuracy in detecting trustworthiness from the facial features of unknown partners. Here we provide evidence that this face-based trustworthiness detection is a fast and intuitive process by testing its performance at split-second levels of exposure. Participants played a Trust game, in which they made decisions whether to trust another player based on their picture. In two studies, we manipulated the exposure time of the picture. We observed that trustworthiness detection remained better than chance for exposure times as short as 100ms, although it disappeared with an exposure time of 33ms. We discuss implications for ongoing debates on the use of facial inferences for social and economic decisions.

Twelve tips for the implementation of EPAs for assessment and entrustment decisions

The concept of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) reframes the approach to assessment in competency-based medical education. Key to this concept is the linking of assessment to decision making about entrusting learners with clinical responsibilities. Based on recent literature and the authors’ experiences with implementing EPAs, this article provides practical recommendations for how to implement EPAs for assessment and entrustment decisions in the workplace. Tips for supervising clinicians include talking to learners about trust, using EPA descriptions to guide learning and teaching, providing learners with greater ad hoc responsibilities, using EPAs to identify/create opportunities for assessment and feedback, including case-based discussions and acknowledging gut feelings about learner readiness for more autonomy. Tips for curriculum leaders entail enabling the trust development, applying trust decisions at all levels of the supervision scale, employing all available information sources for entrustment, empowering learner ownership of the assessment process and using technology for learner tracking and program evaluation.

Trust and risk: a model for medical education.

Health care delivery, and therefore medical education, is an inherently risky business. Although control mechanisms, suchas external audit and accreditation, are designed to manage risk in clinical settings, another approach is 'trust'. The use of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) represents a deliberate way in which this is operationalised as a workplace-based assessment. Once engaged with the concept, clinical teachers and medical educators may have further questions about trust. This narrative overview of the trust literature explores how risk, trust and control intersect with current thinking in medical education, and makes suggestions for potential directions of enquiry. Beyond EPAs, the importance of trust in health care and medical education is reviewed, followed by a brief history of trust research in the wider literature. Interpersonal and organisational levels of trust and a model of trust from the management literature are used to provide the framework with which to decipher trust decisions in health care and medical education, in which risk and vulnerability are inherent. In workplace learning and assessment, the language of 'trust' may offer a more authentic and practical vocabulary than that of 'competency' because clinical and professional risks are explicitly considered. There are many other trust relationships in health care and medical education. At the most basic level, it is helpful to clearly delineate who is the trustor, the trustee, and for what task. Each relationship has interpersonal and organisational elements. Understanding and considered utilisation of trust and control mechanisms in health care and medical education may lead to systems that maturely manage risk while actively encouraging trust and empowerment.

A Trust Evolution Model for Wireless Senor Networks Nodes Based on Imbalanced Reward and Punishment Mechanism

For the network instability problem caused by trust decisions among wireless senor networks nodes (WSNs), this paper introduces an imbalance reward and punishment mechanism. The unreliable factors exist in the real networks, so this paper introduced the package loss rate to build a trust evolution model for wireless senor networks nodes based on imbalance reward and punishment mechanism. By the trust evolution model, the state of interaction of nodes is deduced. At last, through the experiment, various changes of nodes selecting strategy and the effect of the imbalance reward and punishment mechanism on the evolution of the convergence time are analyzed, and the effect of the imbalance rewards and penalties mechanism is verified by the results of the WSNs, which is a kind of node’s initial trust strategy. The imbalance rewards and penalties mechanism for the evolution of the slow convergence in the model mechanism, and can reduce the initial nodes selection strategy trust ratio, which provides the theory basis for the design WSNs trust mechanism.

Trust toward a group of strangers as a function of stereotype-based social identification

Individuals often have to decide whether to trust others at zero or little acquaintance. In this instance, individuals rely on social stereotypes as a guide to their trust decisions. Yet little is known regarding how social cues lead to trust. The present research examines the stereotype-based social identification mechanism through which the facial trustworthiness of a group of strangers determines an individual's trust toward the group. Two experimental studies showed that group warmth (rather than competence or dominance) stereotypes and subsequent self-group merging (inclusion of the group in the self-representation) fully mediated the effect of group facial trustworthiness on trust toward the group at zero acquaintance, whether the level of trust was linked with pecuniary rewards or not. The current findings contribute to the emerging literature on trust at zero or little acquaintance.

Trust strategy simulation of corporation–NPO cross alliance using evolutionary game theory

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics and evolution of trust in organizational cross alliances.Design/methodology/approachIn alliances between corporations and nonprofit organizations, trust in decision-making is a dynamic process. Using the replicated dynamics model of evolutionary game theory, this paper provides a trust decision model and analyzes four scenarios under different parameters. A numerical simulation is developed to present an intuitive interpretation of the dynamic development of trust decisions and the effects of incentive and punishment mechanisms.FindingsUnder different parameters, bounded rationality and utilities result in different but stable evolutionary strategies; the initial probability of adopting a trust strategy leads directly to whether participants adopt the strategy when the system reaches stability after continued games; and incentive and punishment mechanisms can significantly reduce the initial probability of adopting a trust strategy where the system evolves to meet stable state needs.Practical implicationsThe establishment of trust relationships is an important influence on the stable and coordinated development of an alliance. The proposed model can help the alliance build closer trust relationships and provide a theoretical basis for the design of the trust mechanism.Originality/valueIncentive and punishment bound by some degree of trust are introduced to address the problems of trust decisions and their dynamics; the model created reflects the bounded rationality and utility of each game stage. Useful evolutionary stable strategies using different variables are proposed to address the decision-making problems of trust in cross alliances.

Children's selective trust decisions: rational competence and limiting performance factors.

Recent research has amply documented that even preschoolers learn selectively from others, preferring, for example, reliable over unreliable and competent over incompetent models. It remains unclear, however, what the cognitive foundations of such selective learning are, in particular, whether it builds on rational inferences or on less sophisticated processes. The current study, therefore, was designed to test directly the possibility that children are in principle capable of selective learning based on rational inference, yet revert to simpler strategies such as global impression formation under certain circumstances. Preschoolers (N=75) were shown pairs of models that either differed in their degree of competence within one domain (strong vs. weak or knowledgeable vs. ignorant) or were both highly competent, but in different domains (e.g., strong vs. knowledgeable model). In the test trials, children chose between the models for strength- or knowledge-related tasks. The results suggest that, in fact, children are capable of rational inference-based selective trust: when both models were highly competent, children preferred the model with the competence most predictive and relevant for a given task. However, when choosing between two models that differed in competence on one dimension, children reverted to halo-style wide generalizations and preferred the competent models for both relevant and irrelevant tasks. These findings suggest that the rational strategies for selective learning, that children master in principle, can get masked by various performance factors.

Enhancing the Activity of the DLPFC with tDCS Alters Risk Preference without Changing Interpersonal Trust.

Interpersonal trust plays an essential role in economic interactions and social development. Extensive behavioral experiments have examined the nature of trust, particularly the question of whether trusting decisions are connected to risk preferences or risk attitudes. Various laboratory observations have been reported regarding the difference between trust and risk, and neural imaging studies have demonstrated that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) is more activated when individuals decide to trust other human beings compared with individuals decide to invest in a non-social risk condition. Moreover, the rDLPFC has been found to exhibit an intimate relationship with risk preference in previous neuroscience studies. However, the causal relationship between the rDLPFC and trust has rarely been revealed. Whether modulating the excitability of the rDLPFC, which shares roles in both trust and risk decisions, alters the trust or risk preference of participants remains unknown. In the present study, we aimed to provide evidence of a direct link between the neural and behavioral results through the application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the rDLPFC. We found that activating the rDLPFC altered the risk preferences of our participants, whereas no such significant effect over interpersonal trust was observed. Our findings indicate that enhancing the excitability of the rDLPFC using tDCS leads to more conservative decision-makings in a risk game, and this effect is specific to non-social risk rather than social-related trust.

Fibbing About Your Feelings: The Relationship between Emotional Misrepresentation and Trust

Across two pilot studies, and six main experiments, I examine the relationship between emotional misrepresentation and interpersonal trust. I focus on one’s decision to either feign happiness or express authentic negative emotion when one is experiencing distress due to challenging personal circumstances. I find that emotional misrepresentation sends both positive and negative signals about one’s character, and thus has opposing effects on different trusting decisions. Emotional misrepresentation signals self-control and resilience, as well as dishonesty and distrust of others. As a result, individuals who misrepresent their emotions engender high competence-based trust (e.g., they are more likely to be trusted with difficult workplace tasks) but they engender low integrity-based trust (e.g., they are less likely to be trusted to provide their honest feedback to others). I explore these effects and their boundaries across a range of samples, contexts, and manipulations. This research unearths the circumstances in which self-expression helps versus harms interpersonal and workplace relationships, explores the antecedents and consequences of distinct dimensions of trust, and documents new consequences of inauthenticity.

Authentication Challenges in a Global Environment

In this article, we address the problem of scaling authentication for naming, routing, and end-entity (EE) certification to a global environment in which authentication policies and users’ sets of trust roots vary widely. The current mechanisms for authenticating names (DNSSEC), routes (BGPSEC), and EE certificates (TLS) do not support a coexistence of authentication policies, affect the entire Internet when compromised, cannot update trust root information efficiently, and do not provide users with the ability to make flexible trust decisions. We propose the Scalable Authentication Infrastructure for Next-generation Trust (SAINT), which partitions the Internet into groups with common, local trust roots and isolates the effects of a compromised trust root. SAINT requires groups with direct routing connections to cross-sign each other for authentication purposes, allowing diverse authentication policies while keeping all entities’ authentication information globally discoverable. SAINT makes trust root management a central part of the network architecture, enabling trust root updates within seconds and allowing users to make flexible trust decisions. SAINT operates without a significant performance penalty and can be deployed alongside existing infrastructures.

A trust induced recommendation mechanism for reaching consensus in group decision making

This article addresses the inconsistency problem in group decision making caused by disparate opinions of multiple experts. To do so, a trust induced recommendation mechanism is investigated to generate personalised advices for the inconsistent experts to reach higher consensus level. The concept of trust degree (TD) is defined to identify the trusted opinion from group experts, and then the visual trust relationship is built to help experts ‘see’ their own trust preferences within the group. Consequently, trust based personalised advices are generated for the inconsistent experts to revisit their opinions. To model the uncertainty of experts, an interval-valued trust decision making space is defined. It includes the novel concepts of interval-valued trust functions, interval-valued trust score (IVTS) and interval-valued knowledge degree (IVKD). The concepts of consensus degree (CD) between an expert and the rest of experts in the group as well as the harmony degree (HD) between the original opinion and the revised opinion are developed for interval-valued trust functions. Combining HD and CD, a more reasonable policy for group consensus is proposed as it should arrive at the threshold value with the maximum value of harmony and consensus degrees simultaneously. Furthermore, because the trust induced recommendation mechanism focuses on changing inconsistent opinions using only opinions from the trusted experts and not from the distrusted ones, the HD based changes cost to reach the threshold value of consensus is lower than previous mechanisms based on the average of the opinion of all experts. Finally, once consensus has been achieved, a ranking order relation for interval-valued trust functions is constructed to select the most appropriate alternative.

Neural signatures of trust in reciprocity: A coordinate-based meta-analysis.

Trust in reciprocity (TR) is defined as the risky decision to invest valued resources in another party with the hope of mutual benefit. Several fMRI studies have investigated the neural correlates of TR in one-shot and multiround versions of the investment game (IG). However, an overall characterization of the underlying neural networks remains elusive. Here, a coordinate-based meta-analysis was employed (activation likelihood estimation method, 30 articles) to investigate consistent brain activations in each of the IG stages (i.e., the trust, reciprocity and feedback stage). Results showed consistent activations in the anterior insula (AI) during trust decisions in the one-shot IG and decisions to reciprocate in the multiround IG, likely related to representations of aversive feelings. Moreover, decisions to reciprocate also consistently engaged the intraparietal sulcus, probably involved in evaluations of the reciprocity options. On the contrary, trust decisions in the multiround IG consistently activated the ventral striatum, likely associated with reward prediction error signals. Finally, the dorsal striatum was found consistently recruited during the feedback stage of the multiround IG, likely related to reinforcement learning. In conclusion, our results indicate different neural networks underlying trust, reciprocity, and feedback learning. These findings suggest that although decisions to trust and reciprocate may elicit aversive feelings likely evoked by the uncertainty about the decision outcomes and the pressing requirements of social standards, multiple interactions allow people to build interpersonal trust for cooperation via a learning mechanism by which they arguably learn to distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy partners. Hum Brain Mapp 38:1233-1248, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Trust and risk revisited

A trustor faces a risky choice in the trust game when he acts upon his belief regarding the chances of betrayal by the trustee. Despite intensive research there is no clear evidence for a link between lottery risk preferences and risk involved in trusting others. We argue that this is due to crucial differences between the risk measurements in the two settings. Trusting is giving up control to a human while lottery risk arises from a mechanistic randomization device. We propose a risky trust game that experimentally measures risk in the same context as the standard trust game, but nevertheless reduces the trust decision to objective risk. Our results show that transfers in the trust game can indeed be explained by individual risk attitudes elicited with the risky trust game, while lottery risk preferences have no explanatory power.

P2.10 - Can You Blindly Trust Decisions Made By Stringent Drug Regulatory Agencies?

P2.10 - Can You Blindly Trust Decisions Made By Stringent Drug Regulatory Agencies?

The beautiful and the accurate: Are children’s selective trust decisions biased?

Recent findings imply that children rationally appraise potential informants; they weigh an informant’s past accuracy more heavily than other informant-based cues such as accent, age, and familiarity. Yet this conclusion contrasts with the more general conclusion that deliberate decision-making processes are heavily influenced by perceptual biases. We investigated 4- and 5-year-olds’ (N=132) decisions about whether to trust a more versus less attractive informant when (a) both had a similar history of past accuracy or (b) the more attractive informant had been less accurate. Similarly, we investigated their decisions about whether to trust a more versus less accurate informant when (a) both were similarly attractive or (b) the more accurate informant was less attractive. Despite their sensitivity to past accuracy, children’s selective trust was clearly biased by the informant’s attractiveness. Relationships to previous findings and future implications are discussed.

Should Versus Want: On the Relative Contribution of Injunctive Norms and Preferences on Trust Decisions

AbstractDespite much research on the determinants of trust among strangers, its mechanisms are understood only rudimentarily. Recently, it has been proposed that people trust strangers because they believe they should, thus complying with an injunctive norm even if it conflicts with their preferences. However, given the boldness of this claim and in light of independent arguments and earlier findings that suggest otherwise, the hypothesis requires critical scrutiny. Thus, we tested whether the decision to trust (in the trust game) is indeed more strongly driven by what people think they should entrust rather than what they want to entrust in two studies. We consistently found a stronger influence of “want” than of “should” on trust decisions even when controlling for the fairness aspect inherent in the trust game. Thus, our findings speak against a predominant role of injunctive norms for trust behavior and confirm that the latter is mostly driven by preferences. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

To trust or not to trust: social decision-making in post-institutionalized, internationally adopted youth.

Chronic parental maltreatment has been associated with lower levels of interpersonal trust, and depriving environments have been shown to predict short-sighted, risk-averse decision-making. The present study examined whether a circumscribed period of adverse care occurring only early in life was associated with biases in trust behavior. Fifty-three post-institutionalized (PI) youth, adopted internationally on average by 1year of age, and 33 never-institutionalized, non-adopted youth (Mage =12.9years) played a trust game. Participants decided whether or not to share coins with a different anonymous peer in each trial with the potential to receive a larger number of coins in return. Trials were presented in blocks that varied in the degree to which the peers behaved in a trustworthy (reciprocal) or untrustworthy (non-reciprocal) manner. A comparison condition consisted of a computerized lottery with the same choices and probabilistic risk as the peer trials. Non-adopted comparison youth showed a tendency to share more with peers than to invest in the lottery and tended to maintain their level of sharing across trials despite experiencing trials in which peers failed to reciprocate. In contrast, PI children, particularly those who were adopted over 1year of age, shared less with peers than they invested in the lottery and quickly adapted their sharing behavior to peers' responses. These results suggest that PI youth were more mistrusting, more sensitive to both defection and reciprocation, and potentially more accurate in their trusting decisions than comparison youth. Results support the presence of a sensitive period for the development of trust in others, whereby conditions early in life may set long-term biases in decision-making.

Modeling the trust-risk relationship in a wildland recreation setting: A social exchange perspective

We empirically tested relationships among the characteristics of trustworthiness, trust instilled in river guides, and risks perceived by whitewater recreationists that rafted a Wild and Scenic River in the Southern Sierra Nevada, CA. Drawing on a social exchange framework, we used survey data to address the following objectives: 1) investigate three dimensions of trustworthiness, including ability, integrity, and benevolence; 2) examine trust in decisions and trust in values that recreationists associated with their river guides; and 3) determine the effects of trustworthiness and trust on recreationists' beliefs that river guides minimized psychological and social risks from rafting the Kern River. Results from a latent variable path model revealed that the ability and integrity of river guides played important roles in explaining why they were trusted by recreationists, which in turn positively influenced the extent to which guides were believed to minimize risk. Contrary to previous research, we found that trust in values did not play a substantive role in predicting risk perception. A greater understanding of the trust-risk relationship will shed light on how public land management agencies can effectively navigate risk in dangerous wildland environments and provide access to otherwise inaccessible resources owned and valued by the public. Management ImplicationsOur results offer insight on how public land management agencies can negotiate risk and maintain high quality recreational opportunities afforded by wildland environments. Specifically, our study findings suggest:●Whitewater recreationists may not be able to access and/or enjoy wildland environments without trust and trustworthiness garnered from the assistance of guides.●The trust-risk relationship can be understood from a social exchange perspective.●Trustworthiness is an important mechanism for explaining trust in decisions and trust in values.●The extent to which river guides are thought to minimize risks can be predicted by the ability and integrity of a river guide and trust placed on their decisions.●The benevolence of river guides does not factor into the formation of trust or the risk perceptions of whitewater recreationists.

Multiclass ELM Based Smart Trustworthy IDS for MANETs

The dynamic nature of MANET makes it susceptible to several security breaches. A system that observes these kinds of unwanted activities is known as intrusion detection system (IDS). An IDS is responsible to alert the network, in case of any threat observation. This paper broadens the scope of IDS by considering intrusion response also. The proposed work is organized into several phases such as feature selection, trust degree computation, classification and decision making. Intelligent agents are employed to handle all the aforementioned phases. Features of KDD Cup ’99 are reduced from 41 to 17 to minimize the training time and to improve the accuracy of the system. Feature selection is achieved by information gain ratio. The trust degree is computed by the combination of packet delivery ratio, behavior and available energy of a node. The trust degree parameters are vital elements in the classification and the decision-making phase. Extreme learning machine (ELM) is employed as the classifier to categorize nodes into trustworthy, partially trustworthy and malicious. The performance of the system is evaluated in different scenarios such as with/without feature selection and with/without trust degree computation, with respect to detection accuracy, misclassification rate and detection time. The classification accuracy of SVM, MLP, ELM and ELM with trust is also compared.