How to Trust

Abstract

This paper concerns decision-making processes that rely on trust. In particular, it analyzes how different aspects of trust (e.g., trust, trustworthiness, trustworthy evidence) influence trust decisions, and acting on them eventually. It proposes a trust decision model that structures the analysis of contextualized trust problems. Rather than seeking a general definition of trust, this paper advocates the necessity to have a structured way to analyze and characterize situational trust problems systematically.