Senior School, San Francisco, CA

Craig P. Dunn, PhD

Corporate Ethics, Values, and Governance

First, we make an intuitively simple but important point: although there are situations where legal policy should work to either maximize or minimize interpersonal trust, in general, the law should seek to optimize interpersonal trust. Individuals can be too trusting or not trusting enough . Undertrust results in foregone beneficial opportunities, paranoia, and unnecessary tensions, but overtrust leads to ineffective monitoring, fraud, reduced efficiency, and incompetence.

A COGNITIVE THEORY OF TRUST

Corporate Ethics, Values, and Governance

Our second contribution to the trust literature is to begin to develop a cognitive theory of trust. We argue that trust is a nuanced cognitive assessment of another’s trustworthiness, and that it is made using both conscious and subconscious processes. We assess others’ residual trustworthiness as well as make more specific assessments…

A COGNITIVE THEORY OF TRUST

http://www.dunn.cc

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