Welcome

We are an international, multidisciplinary group of

researchers focused on the study of trust and

trustworthiness

Trust is fundamental to all human interactions, as well as playing a role in many decisions we take for granted on a daily basis. We trust that our friends will have our best interest at heart, we trust that the airline who hired the cockpit crew piloting our flights have proper standards for hiring, we trust that our physician has the skills and knowledge to help us heal. Implicit in each of these is an assessment of trustworthiness – that our friends are trustworthy, that the airline is trustworthy, and that the medical school and licensing boards are trustworthy. Each day we enter into relationships where an assessment of trustworthiness is critical to making a sound decision. Often these decisions are automatic, and we often do not consider what information goes into those decision. What if our sources of information provide opposite information, however? What if we are in a new cultural context and do not know how to interpret if a person is trustworthy or not in that context? What about taking a new job – how do we know that the organization is trustworthy with respect to its explicit and implicit promises for employment opportunities? These are the questions that researchers in the TRA address – both to understand what trust is, but also how and when trust is given to other people, organizations, and institutions. - Catherine T. Kwantes, PhD Chair, TRA Steering Committee

The Trustworthiness Research Alliance (TRA) is an international and multidisciplinary group of researchers who investigate trust and the role that perceptions of the trustworthiness of individuals, organizations, and institutions plays in decisions to take the leap of faith we know of as “trust.” Our work explicitly acknowledges that trust occurs in a context, and therefore context plays a role in decisions about trust and judgements of trustworthiness. We look at trust within the contexts of structures, such as institutions and organizations as well as the contexts of societal cultures as sources of behavioural norms and information.