Envisioning trust: trust, metaphors, and situations

Abstract

In this article we argue that the experience and effects of trust are influenced by how people construe trust in specific situations – people are not merely passive receptacles of information but bring their own understanding of trust to social situations (Bandura, 1989). Drawing on the literature on conceptual metaphors we describe these as three trust-metaphors. These trust-metaphors we suggest have important ramifications for how people experience trust, how people go about developing trust and peoples’ reactions to trust or changes in trust (trust-breaches). Different trust-metaphors mediate the link between situational contingencies and demands on the one hand and peoples’ strategies for managing different social situations. Thus different metaphors here can be seen as corresponding to different «strategies» of managing different types of interdependence in different types of situations.