The Contributions of Attribution Theories to Trust Research

This chapter highlights the social-psychological basis for understanding why attributions are central to trust dynamics. It provides an overview of attribution theories that have been invoked in trust research and reviews the trust literature in terms of how these theories have provided a framework for understanding trust development, decline and repair. The chapter deals with interpersonal trust, as opposed to trust in a collective, or object. Social psychologists have developed a variety of attribution theories that seek to explain the cognitive process individuals use to explain why events occur in their social environment. H. H. Kelley&s;s covariation theory advanced a series of factors that prescribe how individuals should validate tentative causal attributions regarding locus of causality. E. E. Jones and K. E. Davis theorized that observers attempt to discern the intentions motivating how actors behave to determine the stable dispositional tendencies of those actors.