The Trustworthiness In The Interpersonal Trust

In the process of interpersonal trust-building, what kind of characteristics can make aperson seemed trustworty? The research on this field is called trustworthiness, which is mailystudied in the framework of Organizational Behavior.They found that benenvolence, integrityand ability were the three master components of trustworthiness. Is this result in theOrganzational Behavior suitable for the general interpersonal trust? In the aspect ofdevelopment, children are coming into connection with more and more strangers as aging, canthey trust others based on the the same trustworthiness as adults in the trust judgements? Thefirst study was maily desiged to solve the two questions above.In addition, some scholars had proposed that the relative importance of trustworthinesswas based on the trust situations，which meant that people trusted different trustworthiness inthe different situation. So the second study was desiged to explore the first choise and therelative importance of trustworthiness in the different situations and different age.The first study maked up an assessment form of the importance of trustworthiness wordsby the method of lexicology, and then440adults,3409years old and30112years oldchildren assessed the importance of each word on5points, when they should make a trustjudement based on these trustworthiness words. Using factor analysis and repeated measuresanalysis of variance, the results showed:(1) in the interpersonal trust, adults trusted4kinds oftrustworthiness, including reliability, benevolence, self-discipline and extraversion. Comparedwith adults, primary students increased ability as trustworthiness, but9years old childrendecreased the self-discipline as trustworthiness;(2)12years old children and adults valued thereliability as the most important trustworthiness, but9years old children valued thebenevolence most.The second study seted up six typical trust situations, and choosed five kinds oftrustworthiness based on the first study result, which included ability, reliability, benevolence,extravertion and self-discipline. Adults,9years old and12years old children were asked tochoose only one trustworthiness based on each trust situation first, and then accessed the degree of trusting each kind of trustworthiness on five points. The results showed:(1) In the six typical trust situations, the first chosed trustworthiness was different: in thecooperation situation, above50%of people chose ability first; in the personal safety situation,most people chose benevolence first; in the property keeping and secret sharing situations,most people chose reliability first; in the task entrusting situation,40%of primary studentschose the self-discipline first, but above50%of adults chose reliability first; in the makingfriends situation,30%of adults chose extravertion, benevolence, and reliblity separatly, butabove40%of the primary students chose extravertion first.(2) In the six typical trust situations, the relative importance of trustworthiness wasdifferent: in the making friends situation, all the participants trusted benevolence, reliabilityand extravertion most, and then trusted ability and self-discipline; in the coopertation situation,all the participants trusted ability most, and then trusted self-discipline, and finally trustedbenevolence, reliability and extravertion; in the task entrusting situation, all the participantstrusted reliability and self-discipline most, and then trusted ability and benevolence, andfinally trusted extravertion; in the secret sharing, all the participants trusted reliability most,and then trusted benevolence and self-discipline, and finally trusted extravertion and ability; inthe personal safety situation, adults trusted benevolence most, and then trusted reliability andextravertion, and finally trusted self-discipline and ability, but primary students trustedbenevolence most, and then trusted self-discipline, reliability and extravertion, and finallytrusted ability; in the property keeping situation, adults and12years old children trustedreliability most, and then trusted benevolence and self-discipline, and finally trustedextravertion and ability, but9years old children trusted reliability most, and then trustedbenevolence and self-discipline, and then trusted extravertion, and finally trusted ability. Intotal, adults were trusting higher then primariy students on the five kinds of trustworthiness.