IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 35

Socio-Cognitive Models of Trust
Belief
Attitude, Expectation, Disposition,
Memory Span, Self-Reinforcing
Good: Initiate or Maintain
Relationships
Bad: Bias or prejudice

Outcome
Fail: Disappointment,
Regretfullness, Forgiveness,
Retaliation
Success: Power, Social Capital,
Performance, Reciprocation

Control
Feedback: Monitoring, Reputation,
Recommendations
Intervention: Suspending, Adjustment
of Relationships or Contract
Good: Supplement or Increase Trust
While Lowering Risk or Uncertainty
Bad: Lower Trust When too Rigid

Trusting Act
Delegation, Cooperation,
Collaboration
Motivation: Self-Interested,
Altruistic, Reciprocation,
Mistrust, Self-Confidence

Fig. 2. Socio-cognitive models of trust.

A tradeoff may exist between
these two goals to achieve a desired
level of system sustainability. Therefore, this work proposes that idea of
a sustainable network where such
a system quickly establishes and
fosters trust, with respect to social/
cognitive interactions of entities
within the system. In recent work
on sustainability in communication
networks (e.g., wireless networks
including sensor or mobile ad hoc
networks), sustainability is generally used to represent survivability
to optimize limited resources (i.e.,
battery life, bandwidth or memory)
[15]. This article proposes that multiple and diverse dimensions of sustainability need to be considered to
build ideal networks based on sociocognitive models of trust.

Socio-Cognitive
Models of Trust
A socio-cognitive model of
trust integrates motivations with
beliefs [4]. Motivation depends
on the resultant impact of an act
(i.e., a decision) on achievement of
goals and social and relational consequences. We focus on how trust
plays a key role in making decisions, how increased trust affects
future decisions, and how interactions among entities can change the
atmosphere of trust in the system.
Fig. 2 shows how trust (trustor to a

trustee) can be formed, aggregated,
and evolved over time. The trustor
is assumed to be a cognitive entity
(e.g., person or intelligent agent),
while the trustee can be any entity
such as a person, machine, information, institution, or service [4], [12].
Belief
Trust is initially based on an individual's belief with or without any
initial evidence to trust or not to
trust. This belief can be affected
by individuals' disposition or propensity to trust (e.g., optimistic or
pessimistic, or patient or impatient,
consistent or inconsistent), memory span (i.e., the period of events
one uses to evaluate trust), or selfreinforcing or self-fulfilling (i.e.,
one may want to prove what he/
she believes) towards other entities.
Further, previous experiences (e.g.,
past friendship or collaboration) or
opinions from third parties can be
used to aggregate and evolve trust.
Control
Monitoring (e.g., direct observations)
or collecting reputation or recommendations from third parties can
be control mechanisms to provide
feedback for the trustor to form trust
of the trustee [4]. A stronger control
mechanism than providing feedback
can be an intervention to the current
relationship of two parties to adjust,

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SuMMEr 2013

suspend, or terminate the relationship for mitigating risk or regretfulness [4]. However, when control
is implemented too rigidly, trust is
diminished and performance deteriorates autonomy where resources are
restricted and the trustee differently
behaves depending on the degree
of trust the trustor has towards the
trustee [14]. For example, if A tries
to control B, then this may prove that
A does not trust B. However, when
control is employed effectively, it
initiates, promotes, and enhances
trust because it alleviates anxiety of
the trustor or risk for possible catastrophes. When the trustor decides
whether or not he/she trusts the
trustee, the purpose, for example,
may be delegation [4] of tasks or initiate cooperation or collaboration.
Trusting Act
A trusting act may be influenced
by various motivations such as selfinterested payoff (i.e., gains if successful, future reciprocation by the
trustee), reciprocation for the past
help by the trustee, or altruism [3],
[16]. Besides, the trustor may misdiagnose trust (i.e., mistrust) and make
a decision based on it. When the
trustor decides to trust the trustee,
the trustee's act (or behavior) is also
affected by various motivations such
as self-confidence, reciprocation,
altruism, computed reciprocation, or
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013