Trust (social science)
a feeling or certainty that someone or something can be trusted
Trust is the belief that another person will do what is expected and is built through repeated consistency. It brings with it a willingness for one party (the trustor) to become vulnerable to another party (the trustee), on the presumption that the trustee will act in ways that benefit the trustor. In addition, the trustor does not have control over the actions of the trustee; however, those actions influence the trustor's positive, neutral, or negative evaluations regarding the trustworthiness of the trustee. Scholars distinguish between generalized trust (also known as social trust), which is the extension of trust to a relatively large circle of unfamiliar others, and particularized trust, which is contingent on a specific situation or a specific relationship.
As the outcome of trust is uncertain and depends on what one chooses to believe, the trustor can only evaluate and develop expectations based on the trustee's actions. Such expectations are formed with a view to the motivations of the trustee, dependent on their characteristics, the situation, and their interaction. The trustor's risk perception of failure or harm to themselves stems from the uncertainty of the trustee's behavior.
In the social sciences, the subtleties of trust are a subject of ongoing research. In sociology and psychology, the degree to which one party trusts another is a measure of belief in the honesty, fairness, or benevolence of another party. The term "confidence" is more appropriate for a belief in the competence of the other party.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Trust (social science)” as a feeling or certainty that someone or something can be trusted. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as a feeling or certainty that someone or something can be trusted. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q659974. The Library of Congress control number is sh85138261. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trust (social science)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.