The edge of trust: An introduction

The dynamics of interpersonal trust are an essential part of understanding how people think and act in social interactions. Trust enables human beings to form meaningful personal relationships (Simpson, 2007) and engage in mutually profitable social and economic exchanges (Kohn, 2008). Yet, trust is also difficult—both for social actors and the scientists who study them. Most of us wish to give trust and to receive it, but we worry that our trust might be betrayed by others or that we might fail to live up to the trust that others place in us (Krueger & Evans, 2013). Recently, trust has become a prominent topic of research in social cognition and a point of intersection with other subdisciplines of the social and biological sciences. To showcase theoretical and empirical progress—at the edge of inquiry—we have assembled this issue of contributions from an interdisciplinary panel of experts, asking them to survey pressing questions in trust research. This introduction provides a brief history of the scientific study of interpersonal trust and an overview of the topics covered in this issue.