Course outline
Module 1
Module 1: Foundations of Trust
Foundations of Trust
Knowledge check
Q1. In everyday social psychology, which best describes trust?
- A. A guarantee that another person will never betray you
- B. A willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on positive expectations about their behavior ✓
- C. A feeling of affection toward someone you know well
- D. An agreement that is legally enforceable
Why: Trust is commonly defined as a willingness to be vulnerable based on positive expectations of another's intentions or behavior. It involves accepting risk, and it does not require certainty or a guarantee of outcomes.
Q2. Which of the following is one of the three core components of trustworthiness often identified in research (e.g., Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman's model)?
- A. Popularity
- B. Wealth
- C. Ability ✓
- D. Physical attractiveness
Why: Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) identified ability, benevolence, and integrity as the three main factors that make someone trustworthy. Ability refers to skills and competence, benevolence to goodwill toward the trustor, and integrity to adherence to acceptable principles.
Q3. What does the term 'reciprocity' refer to in the context of trust-building?
- A. Ignoring past mistakes made by others
- B. Responding to another person's cooperative or uncooperative behavior in kind ✓
- C. Demanding repayment of every favor immediately
- D. Sharing identical information with everyone
Why: Reciprocity is the tendency to respond to others' actions in kind: cooperation tends to be returned with cooperation, and defection with defection. It is a central mechanism through which trust is built or eroded over repeated interactions.
Q4. Why is trust often described as asymmetric in its growth and decline?
- A. Trust grows faster than it can ever be lost
- B. Trust is easily lost after a single negative event but typically takes many positive interactions to rebuild ✓
- C. Trust only develops between people of the same age
- D. Trust cannot change once it has been established
Why: Research on the 'negativity bias' shows that negative information and betrayals carry more weight than positive ones. A single breach can damage trust quickly, while rebuilding it usually requires sustained consistent behavior over time.
Q5. Which early life experience is most associated with the development of a person's basic trust orientation, according to Erik Erikson's stage theory?
- A. Academic achievement in school
- B. Consistent, responsive care from caregivers during infancy ✓
- C. Participation in team sports
- D. Exposure to multiple languages
Why: Erikson's first psychosocial stage, 'trust versus mistrust,' occurs in infancy. Reliable and responsive caregiving helps infants develop a foundational sense that the world is predictable and dependable, which shapes later trust in relationships.
Module 2
Module 2: The Psychology of Trust
The Psychology of Trust
Knowledge check
Q1. According to psychological research, which factor is most central to how people initially decide whether to trust someone?
- A. The other person's physical attractiveness
- B. Perceived competence, benevolence, and integrity ✓
- C. The length of time they have known each other
- D. How much money the other person has
Why: Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman's influential model identifies ability (competence), benevolence (caring about the trustor's interests), and integrity (following acceptable principles) as the core trustworthiness factors people weigh when deciding whether to trust.
Q2. What is the term for a person's general tendency to trust others across many situations, which varies from person to person?
- A. Dispositional trust ✓
- B. Reciprocal altruism
- C. Cognitive dissonance
- D. Social loafing
Why: Dispositional trust refers to a stable, individual-level willingness to trust others that develops through early experiences and personality. It influences how readily someone extends trust before knowing anything specific about a particular person.
Q3. Psychologist Erik Erikson proposed that the first stage of psychosocial development centers on which trust-related conflict?
- A. Autonomy versus shame and doubt
- B. Trust versus mistrust ✓
- C. Initiative versus guilt
- D. Identity versus role confusion
Why: Erikson's first stage, occurring in infancy, is trust versus mistrust. Infants who receive consistent, responsive care develop a basic sense that the world is reliable, which shapes their trust in relationships throughout life.
Q4. Which phenomenon describes the tendency to trust a person more after they have repeatedly been seen or encountered in a neutral, low-stakes setting?
- A. The mere-exposure effect ✓
- B. The bystander effect
- C. The Dunning-Kruger effect
- D. The halo effect only
Why: The mere-exposure effect, described by Robert Zajonc, shows that repeated neutral exposure increases liking and familiarity. This familiarity can build a sense of safety that contributes to trust, though it is not a substitute for evidence of trustworthiness.
Q5. Research on trust repair suggests that after a trust violation, which response is generally most effective at restoring trust?
- A. Denying that the violation occurred
- B. Ignoring the issue entirely
- C. Acknowledging the violation and offering a sincere apology ✓
- D. Immediately changing the subject
Why: Studies on trust repair find that acknowledging the wrongdoing and apologizing sincerely helps rebuild trust, especially when it addresses the specific type of violation (competence or integrity). Denial and avoidance tend to damage trust further.
Module 3
Module 3: Trust in Relationships
Trust in Relationships
Knowledge check
Q1. According to research on trust in relationships, which behavior most strongly builds trust over time?
- A. Making grand promises during conflicts
- B. Consistently following through on small, everyday commitments ✓
- C. Sharing every personal secret early in the relationship
- D. Avoiding any disagreement with your partner
Why: Trust is built through repeated, reliable actions. Consistently keeping small commitments signals dependability, which accumulates into lasting trust.
Q2. What is the term for the belief that a partner's intentions toward you are good, even when their actions are ambiguous?
- A. Attachment anxiety
- B. Benevolent attribution ✓
- C. Cognitive dissonance
- D. Social comparison
Why: Benevolent attribution refers to interpreting a partner's ambiguous behavior in the most favorable light, which is a key mechanism that sustains trust in close relationships.
Q3. Which of the following is considered a core component of trust in psychological research on close relationships?
- A. Predictability, dependability, and faith ✓
- B. Wealth, status, and physical appearance
- C. Frequency of social media interaction
- D. Identical personality traits
Why: Rempel, Holmes, and Zanna's influential model describes trust as resting on predictability, dependability, and faith, which together allow a person to rely on a partner despite uncertainty.
Q4. Why does self-disclosure matter for building trust between people?
- A. It obligates the listener to share equally in return
- B. It signals vulnerability and invites the other person to respond with care ✓
- C. It proves that the discloser has nothing to hide
- D. It eliminates the need for future communication
Why: Sharing personal information in a measured way signals willingness to be vulnerable. When the other person responds supportively, mutual trust deepens through this cycle of disclosure and responsiveness.
Q5. After a partner breaks a promise, which response is most consistent with research on trust repair?
- A. Ignoring the incident so it is forgotten
- B. Acknowledging the breach, taking responsibility, and demonstrating changed behavior over time ✓
- C. Immediately ending the relationship to avoid further hurt
- D. Demanding that the partner prove trustworthiness in a single grand gesture
Why: Trust repair research emphasizes acknowledgment, accountability, and sustained behavioral change. Trust is rebuilt gradually through consistent actions rather than through ignoring the problem or a single dramatic gesture.
Module 4
Module 4: Building Trust in Teams
Building Trust in Teams
Knowledge check
Q1. Which of the following is considered a foundational element of trust within a team?
- A. Strict hierarchical control over all decisions
- B. Consistent follow-through on commitments ✓
- C. Limiting communication to formal meetings only
- D. Avoiding any discussion of mistakes
Why: Trust grows when people repeatedly see that others do what they say they will do. Consistent follow-through signals reliability, which is a core building block of team trust.
Q2. What term describes the belief that teammates have good intentions toward one another?
- A. Psychological safety ✓
- B. Groupthink
- C. Social loafing
- D. Role ambiguity
Why: Psychological safety, popularized by Amy Edmondson, refers to a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, including asking questions and admitting mistakes. It relies on confidence in teammates' good intentions.
Q3. Which behavior by a team leader most effectively builds trust?
- A. Taking credit for successes achieved by the team
- B. Admitting their own mistakes openly ✓
- C. Withholding information to maintain authority
- D. Assigning blame quickly when problems arise
Why: When leaders admit their own errors, they model vulnerability and signal that it is acceptable for others to do the same. This reciprocal openness strengthens trust across the team.
Q4. Why is competence-based trust important in teams?
- A. It eliminates the need for communication
- B. It allows members to rely on each other's skills and judgment ✓
- C. It ensures everyone has the same role
- D. It removes the need for feedback
Why: Competence-based trust means team members believe their colleagues have the skills and judgment to do their work well. This confidence enables delegation and coordination without constant oversight.
Q5. Which practice is most likely to erode trust within a team over time?
- A. Sharing context behind decisions
- B. Giving timely and specific feedback
- C. Inconsistently applying rules to different members ✓
- D. Recognizing contributions publicly
Why: Perceived unfairness, such as applying rules inconsistently, undermines confidence that everyone is treated by the same standards. Over time this breeds suspicion and weakens the sense of mutual reliability.
Module 5
Module 5: Trust and Decision-Making
Trust and Decision-Making
Knowledge check
Q1. In decision-making research, what does 'trust' most commonly refer to?
- A. A guaranteed outcome that eliminates all risk
- B. A willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on positive expectations about their behavior ✓
- C. A feeling of certainty that never changes over time
- D. A legal contract that binds two people together
Why: Trust is generally defined as a willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on positive expectations about that party's intentions or behavior, even though the outcome is uncertain.
Q2. Which of the following best describes the role of risk in trust-based decisions?
- A. Trust is only relevant when there is no risk involved
- B. Trust requires the presence of some risk or uncertainty, since without it there is no need to trust ✓
- C. Risk always makes people distrust others
- D. Risk is irrelevant because trust removes all uncertainty
Why: Trust becomes meaningful only when there is uncertainty and potential loss. If an outcome is guaranteed, no trust is needed, so risk is a necessary condition for trust to matter.
Q3. In the trust game used in behavioral economics, what does the first player's decision to send money to the second player typically represent?
- A. A demonstration of dominance over the other player
- B. A measure of how much the first player trusts the second player to return a share of the money ✓
- C. A random choice with no psychological meaning
- D. An attempt to avoid any interaction with the other player
Why: In the trust game, sending money signals trust, since the sender is vulnerable to the receiver not reciprocating. The amount sent is commonly used as a behavioral measure of trust.
Q4. According to research on trust and decision-making, which factor most strongly influences whether people extend trust to strangers?
- A. The stranger's physical height
- B. Perceived trustworthiness, including signals of ability, benevolence, and integrity ✓
- C. The current weather conditions
- D. The number of languages the person speaks
Why: Influential models of trust, such as Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman's framework, identify ability, benevolence, and integrity as key components of perceived trustworthiness that drive willingness to trust.
Q5. Why might a person who was previously betrayed make more cautious decisions in future trust situations?
- A. Betrayal has no lasting effect on decision-making
- B. Negative experiences update expectations and can make people weigh potential losses more heavily ✓
- C. People always forget past betrayals immediately
- D. Betrayal increases a person's general optimism about others
Why: Past betrayals update a person's expectations about others' reliability, and research on loss aversion suggests that potential losses from future betrayal are often weighted more heavily, leading to more cautious trust decisions.
Module 6
Module 6: Breaking and Repairing Trust
Breaking and Repairing Trust
Knowledge check
Q1. According to trust research, which component of trust is most associated with whether people believe you have the skills to do what you say you will do?
- A. Benevolence
- B. Competence ✓
- C. Integrity
- D. Predictability
Why: Competence refers to the ability to deliver on promises. Trust models often separate it from benevolence (caring about the other person's interests) and integrity (adhering to moral principles).
Q2. Research on trust violations suggests that after a breach, which response from the violator tends to be most effective at restoring trust?
- A. Denying that the breach occurred
- B. Offering a sincere apology that acknowledges responsibility ✓
- C. Immediately changing the subject
- D. Blaming external circumstances
Why: Sincere apologies that acknowledge responsibility address the violated expectations directly. Denial, deflection, and blame-shifting typically damage trust further because they signal a lack of integrity.
Q3. Why do people often find it harder to rebuild trust than to build it initially?
- A. Trust cannot be repaired under any circumstances
- B. People weight negative information more heavily than positive information ✓
- C. Breaches always involve large financial losses
- D. Repair requires the same person who caused the breach to leave
Why: The negativity bias means people give more weight to negative events than to comparable positive ones. A single breach can therefore outweigh many prior positive interactions, making repair slower and more effortful.
Q4. In the context of trust repair, what does 'consistent behavior over time' most directly help establish?
- A. A reputation for never making mistakes
- B. Predictability, which allows others to form new expectations based on evidence ✓
- C. Immediate forgiveness from all parties
- D. Legal protection against future breaches
Why: Repeated reliable behavior gives others evidence to update their expectations. Trust is rebuilt through accumulated predictable actions rather than through any single gesture or claim.
Q5. Which factor is most likely to make a trust violation feel more severe to the person affected?
- A. The violation was accidental and quickly disclosed
- B. The violation was intentional and concealed ✓
- C. The violator has a long history of reliability
- D. The violation involved a minor, low-stakes matter
Why: Intentional violations signal ill will, and concealment adds a sense of betrayal because it prevented the injured party from responding. Both increase perceived severity compared with accidental or openly disclosed breaches.
Module 7
Module 7: Trust in the Digital Age
Trust in the Digital Age
Knowledge check
Q1. Which of the following best describes what makes online trust different from trust in face-to-face interactions?
- A. Online interactions never involve any emotional content
- B. Online, people often lack many of the non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions and tone of voice, that normally help us judge trustworthiness ✓
- C. Online trust is always stronger because people are more honest behind a screen
- D. Online trust depends only on the age of the website involved
Why: In digital settings, many non-verbal signals that humans use to assess trustworthiness are reduced or absent, so people rely more on proxies like reviews, design, branding, and credentials.
Q2. What is a 'reputation system' in the context of online platforms?
- A. A government agency that certifies websites
- B. A mechanism, such as ratings and reviews, that aggregates past behavior to help users judge whether others can be trusted ✓
- C. A password-protection method for user accounts
- D. A type of advertising that promotes well-known brands
Why: Reputation systems, like seller ratings on marketplaces, collect feedback from past interactions so future users can estimate the trustworthiness of unfamiliar parties.
Q3. Why can online reviews be an unreliable signal of trust?
- A. Reviews are always written by the company being reviewed
- B. Reviews can be fabricated, manipulated, or skewed by a small number of extreme opinions ✓
- C. Reviews cannot be read by mobile users
- D. Reviews are automatically deleted after thirty days
Why: Fake reviews, incentivized ratings, and small sample sizes can distort reputation signals, so users should consider review volume, patterns, and detail rather than relying on star ratings alone.
Q4. What does the term 'phishing' refer to?
- A. A method of compressing large video files
- B. Fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information by posing as a trustworthy entity ✓
- C. A technique for improving website search rankings
- D. A form of encrypted communication between two parties
Why: Phishing exploits trust by impersonating banks, employers, or services to trick people into revealing passwords or financial details, often through emails or fake websites.
Q5. Which practice most helps people make sound trust decisions when interacting online?
- A. Trusting any site that has an attractive design
- B. Verifying identities and sources through independent channels before sharing sensitive information ✓
- C. Assuming that anyone who responds quickly is trustworthy
- D. Avoiding all digital interactions entirely
Why: Independent verification, such as checking a website's address directly or confirming a request through a known phone number, reduces reliance on signals that can be faked, such as polished design or fast replies.