Building an Integrative Perspective of Trust by Drawing on Social Attitude Research

Trust lies at the heart of human interaction and of societies in general. Multiple research fields within and beyond psychology address trust as a research topic. However, even within psychology, different traditions have developed various and sometimes (apparently) contradictory perspectives on trust. This includes such different approaches as trust as choice behavior and trust as evaluation and has led to various inconsistencies in findings and methods. This review reconciles such different approaches, systematizes the heterogeneity of concepts, and raises new questions for future research by approaching trust from a social attitude perspective. Specifically, we suggest drawing parallels to attitude research, as both concepts share core characteristics. For instance, both attitudes and trust can be conceptualized as having cognitive, affective, and behavioral components, and on different abstraction levels. Based on these and other such parallels, we illustrate how insights from the attitude framework suggest solutions to key puzzles in trust research. That is, we show how previous debates and problems in attitude research, such as attitude-behavior-inconsistencies, and the solutions that have been developed for them, can help resolve similar issues in trust research, such as the inconsistent findings between self-reported trust and trust behavior. We also draw on the attitude framework to reveal unstudied questions and to outline promising avenues for future trust research (e.g., by drawing on insights from self-perception theory). Overall, using the attitude framework to build bridges between various streams of trust research is a promising start towards a comprehensive understanding of trust that can considerably benefit future trust research in various research fields.