Trust Dynamics: How Trust Is Influenced by Direct Experiences and by Trust Itself

  • Authors:
  • Rino Falcone;Cristiano Castelfranchi

  • Affiliations:
  • ISTC -CNR;ISTC -CNR

  • Venue:
  • AAMAS '04 Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

In this paper we will examine two main aspects of trust dynamics: a) How direct experiences involving trust, with their successes or failures, influence the future trust of an agent about similar facts. We challenge the trivial idea that always success increases trust while failure decreases it. Of course, this primitive view cannot be avoided till Trust is modeled just as a simple index, a dimension, a number; for example reduced to mere subjective probability. We claim that a cognitive attribution process is needed in order to update trust on the basis of an ýinterpretationý of the outcome of Aýs reliance on B and of Býs performance (failure or success). b) How the fact that A trusts B and relies on it in situation 驴 can actually (objectively) influence Býs trustworthiness in the 驴 situation. Either trust is a selffulfilling prophecy that modifies the subjective probability of the predicted event; or it is a self-defeating strategy by negatively influencing the events. These phenomena are very crucial in human societies (states, market, groups), but also in computer mediated Organizations, Interactions (EC), Cooperation (CSCW) and even in Multi-Agent Systems with autonomous agents. We present a formal model of these dynamic nontrivial aspects.