The trust equation

Trust works bilaterally. One trusts and the other is trusted. While the two are related, they are not the same. For the one who would be trusted, it’s all about how worthy they are of our trust – how trustworthy they are.

We use the word ‘trust’ to describe what we think of what people say, and also how they behave. We use it to describe whether or not we are comfortable sharing information about ourselves or others with them. And we use it to indicate whether or not we feel other people have our interests at heart, or just their own.

With this in mind, we can represent trust as a simple equation consisting of four variables: credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation.