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Dysfunctional trusting and distrusting: Integrating

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Dysfunctional trusting and distrusting: Integrating

trust and bias perspectives

Volker Patent

To cite this article: Volker Patent (2022): Dysfunctional trusting and distrusting: Integrating trust
and bias perspectives, Journal of Trust Research, DOI: 10.1080/21515581.2022.2113887

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JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH
https://doi.org/10.1080/21515581.2022.2113887

REVIEW

Dysfunctional trusting and distrusting: Integrating trust and

bias perspectives
Volker Patent
School of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper offers an integrative review of the concept of Received 20 November 2020
dysfunctional trust from a trust and bias research perspective. Accepted 12 August 2022
Trust and cognitive/social biases are isomorphically related
ACTION EDITOR
concepts in their functions as reducers of cognitive effort and Guido Möllering
facilitators/inhibitors of action. In the case of dysfunctional trust
and distrust, bias perspectives contribute theoretically to a KEYWORDS
framework for the study of the ‘errors’ in decision-making that Trust; Distrust; Cognitive
lead to dysfunctional outcomes of trusting. By reviewing biases Bias; Dysfunctional Trust;
and their role in generating trust and the converse, the biasing Decision-making
role of trust within a trust antecedent framework, the review
integrates the conceptual linkages between research on bias and
heuristics and research on trust, providing a basis for further
research and practical applications in educational, business,
political, and media domains. The paper makes recommendations
for research and practical applications to mitigate the impacts of
misinformation, bias in decision-making and dysfunctional trust.
Attending to cognitive and other biases in situations involving
trust promises to support greater informational resilience by
raising metacognitive awareness of bias and trust in human
decision-making.

Introduction
The extent to which one can and should trust others, institutions and information is an
increasingly significant influence on the stability of organisations and social and economic
systems in democratic capitalist societies (Zollo et al., 2015). In recent years social trust has
declined steadily, culminating in 2021 being declared year of informational bankruptcy by
the Edelman Trust Barometer (Edelman, 2021). The terms dysfunctional trust and distrust
characterise trust in situations in which trust or distrust leads to dysfunctional outcomes
within individual and organisational relationships (Anuar & Dewayanti, 2021; Lehtonen,
Kinder, et al., 2021; Kramer, 1999; Lehtonen, Kojo, et al., 2022; Medina, 2020; Oomsels
et al., 2019; Wiig & Tharaldsen, 2012). In the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine and
the role played by misinformation and propaganda, the concept of ‘dysfunctional trust’
remains timely and relevant.

CONTACT Volker Patent volker.patent@open.ac.uk

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 V. PATENT

Trust serves the psychological function of deepening social exchange (Blau, 1964),
reducing uncertainty, complexity and the need for more information (Luhmann, 1979;
Morrison & Firmstone, 2000) while suspending doubt (Möllering, 2005) in situations of vul-
nerability and risk (Mayer et al., 1995). The notion of bias is linked with decision-making
errors and is inherent in theoretical conceptualisations of trust. Without questioning their
veracity, basing trust or distrust on erroneous inferences can lead to trust being misplaced
or failing to be extended. Because of this, bias is thematically relevant to discussions of
dysfunctional trust. While there has been some theorising on dysfunctional trust in the
trust literature (Tomlinson & Lewicki, 2006), there is little theoretical integration of bias
within the broader literature on dysfunctional trust. Work is needed to advance under-
standing of the topic further.

Aims of the paper

This paper focuses on dysfunctional trust, emphasising the process that leads to it, namely
dysfunctional trusting. It aims to integrate the concept of dysfunctional trust within the
theoretical literature on trust and bias. For this purpose, the paper briefly reviews
definitions of trust linked to the integrative process model of trust (Mayer et al., 1995)
and available conceptions of dysfunctional trust. Similarly, a definition of bias and its rel-
evance to trust are outlined. The review then organises selected work on trust and bias
conceptually around the trust antecedent framework. Theoretical and practical impli-
cations of dysfunctional trust are then discussed. Recommendations for further research
and practical strategies for engaging with trust in contemporary contexts are then
provided.
This paper makes three main contributions. There has been a growth in interest in
studying the constituents of trust and bias, including trust in decision-making and heur-
istics (Lewicki & Brinsfield, 2019) and focus on the trustor (Möllering, 2019). This paper
contributes to the emerging debates in the field by addressing psychological aspects
of trust situated in the trustor and the contextual aspects that provide the ‘what’ and
‘in whom’ one trusts. As a first contribution, this paper provides a synthesis of theoretically
linked perspectives on bias and trust, focusing on the relatively new and emerging
concept of dysfunctional trust.
Secondly, the interest in trust constituents stems from the need to develop more
nuanced insights into trust as a process for making sense of crises (Möllering, 2013; Möl-
lering & Sydow, 2019). With the predicted trends toward greater disruption in post-COVID
society and organisations in future (Grinin et al., 2021) and a crisis in trust (Edelman, 2021),
there has been a growing interest in trust in the disrupted contexts of economic crises,
technological change and strategic organisational change (Gustafsson et al., 2021), and
in global crises such as pandemics, climate change, poverty, political upheavals and inter-
national conflicts (for example, Lopez-Claros et al., 2020; Stern, 2009). It is in these con-
texts that dysfunctional trust becomes especially salient. As the experience of COVID-
19 highlights, the effects of misinformation and mistrust on organisational and individual
relationships create severe challenges for institutions in overcoming the effects of propa-
ganda (Morkūnas, 2022), suspicion of organisations (Van Prooijen et al., 2022) and imple-
menting measures that facilitate an organisationally resilient response during crises
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 3

(Barua et al., 2020). This review contributes to the theorising of trust and distrust in dis-
rupted contexts.
Thirdly, questions regarding functional and dysfunctional trust and bias have practical
implications for management and decision-making in disrupted contexts because trust
and bias connect fundamentally to ontological and epistemic questions, namely beliefs
about what is real and what can be relied on as a basis for trust. A synthesis of trust
and bias perspectives is highly relevant to building and repairing epistemic trust in
social and organisational systems damaged by misinformation and fake news (Reglitz,
2021; Sinatra & Hofer, 2016; Tanzer et al., 2021). Researchers and practitioners from
various fields will be interested in applying the integrated conceptual and methodologi-
cal insights for studying dysfunctional trust offered in this paper.

Method for integrative review

Suggestions for writing integrative reviews (Torraco, 2016) informed the preparation of
this paper. The topic emerged from earlier work presented at a conference in 2016 and
is further indebted to the feedback from reviewers that led to an extensive review of
the earlier versions of this paper and the adoption of dysfunctional trust and distrust as
the focus for the integration.
Google Scholar and PsycInfo were used to identify relevant definitions and terms relat-
ing to the focus of this study. Table 1 below shows a list of examples of the search terms
used.
The literature on bias alone is vast; additional filters were employed to reduce the
amount of material surveyed by searching in the title (e.g. allintitle: ‘cognitive bias’)
and using domain databases such as PsycInfo. Articles of interest were chosen iteratively
throughout the process of writing this review. Search terms were combined to explore the

Table 1. Example search terms for integrative review.

Search terms Total All in title Source
‘bias’ 82,240 14916
‘cognitive bias’ 83,200 2140 Google Scholar
‘social bias’ 20,000 217 Google Scholar
Bias ‘attributional bias’ 10,200 175 Google Scholar
‘framing’ 12,635 3307 PsycInfo
‘heuristics’ 15,808 2673 PsycInfo
Trust ‘trust evaluations’ 2100 18 Google Scholar
‘trustworthiness’ 610,000 137000 Google Scholar
‘trustworthiness’ 4690 705 PsycInfo
‘propensity to trust’ 9500 75 Google Scholar
’dispositional trust’ 3270 44 Google Scholar
‘trust and control’ 15,100 460 Google Scholar
‘vulnerability and trust’ 1380 33 Google Scholar
‘trust and risk’ 21,200 968 Google Scholar
‘uncertainty’ 2350 92 Google Scholar
‘dysfunctional trust’ 54 0 Google Scholar
‘dysfunctional distrust’ 53 0 Google Scholar
Combinations trust and bias 1372 29 PsycInfo
trust and framing 238 10 PsycInfo
trust and attributional bias 4 0 PsycInfo
trust and cognitive bias 119 2 PsycInfo
trust and reality 1353 7 PsycInfo
4 V. PATENT

intersection between different concepts. As the paper centred on dysfunctions of trust,

terms such as ‘mistrust’, ‘distrust’, and ‘human error’ emerged from early readings of
work and were added to refine searches. Additional terms were added to identify
named biases and how these had been used in theorising trust, for example, ‘illusory
control’, ‘negativity bias’, ‘optimism bias’, and ‘confirmatory bias’.
Dysfunctional trust and dysfunctional trusting reflect an emergent rather than an
established field. This insight led to the thematic organisation of the review based on
the trust antecedent framework to provide the necessary integrative framework for the
conceptual and theoretical development of dysfunctional trust in future research.

Definitions of trust
A widely accepted definition in trust research is the definition given by Mayer et al. (1995),
defining trust as ‘the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party
based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the
trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party’. This definition
forms the basis of the trust antecedent model in which trust as a willingness to be vulner-
able is the outcome of antecedent processes (evaluations of trustees’ trustworthiness and
trustor disposition in Mayer et al., 1995). While this model has received broad support due
to its contribution toward theoretical integration in a fragmented field, additional
domain-specific antecedents have been proposed in extensions of this framework (e.g.
Dietz & Den Hartog, 2006). PytlikZillig and Kimbrough (2016) make the point that ‘a full
understanding of trust requires inclusive attention to many different aspects, including
the dispositions, perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and intentions of the
trustor; characteristics of the trustee; and features of the context or situation in which
the trustor and trustee are embedded’ (PytlikZillig & Kimbrough, 2016, p. 37).
The definition of trust adopted in this paper follows Mayer et al. (1995) in framing trust
defined as the willingness to be vulnerable based on expectations (relating to the trus-
tee’s likely behaviour), risk (vulnerability) and agency (the ability to control outcomes).
Distrust is regarded as a separate construct to trust, which is functionally equivalent to
trust (McKnight & Chervany, 2001). While trust might be based on an expectation that per-
formance and obligations will be met, distrust is an expectation that they will not (Barber,
1983; McKnight & Chervany, 2001), leading to an unwillingness to be vulnerable (Bijlsma-
Frankema et al., 2015).

Definition of dysfunctional trust

Dysfunctional trust has received scant attention in the literature, owing to a ‘positivity
bias’ in trust research (Oomsels et al., 2019). Interest in dysfunctional trust seems to be
related to specific contexts (e.g. public services, nuclear safety, management, military,
business, commerce, and personal relationships), thus making it an applied concept
with broad appeal. The term ‘dysfunctional trust’ has been used in relatively few
papers and is often used with little definition or connection to the trust literature or
theories on trust. Some researchers associate dysfunctionality in trust with ‘blind
trust’ (Engen & Lindøe, 2019; Lehtonen, Kojo, et al., 2022; Medina, 2020). Interest in
the ‘dark side of trust’ (Skinner et al., 2013) also links with dysfunctional trust, and
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 5

distrust not always being negative. Where definitions are available, the term ‘dysfunc-
tional trust’ has been defined as a state that exists on a continuum ranging from func-
tional to dysfunctional (Tharaldsen et al., 2010). As several authors note, trust and
distrust can be functional or dysfunctional (Anuar & Dewayanti, 2021; Wiig & Tharald-
sen, 2012). What leads to the switch between functional and dysfunctional states has
been referred to as dysfunctional trusting (Hart et al., 2021). From a Luhmannian per-
spective, dysfunctionality arises because trust (or distrust) fails to remove uncertainty
or complexity (Wiig & Tharaldsen, 2012). Dysfunctional trust and distrust depend on
whether trusting or distrusting has been functional and dysfunctional in its outcomes.
It may not be possible to determine when dysfunctional trust occurs without judging
the outcome, creating a conceptual challenge. Potentially, functional processes of
uncertainty reduction may lead to dysfunctional outcomes because they fail to
reduce uncertainty or because the outcome for the trustor incurs penalties that
impact their (or their organisation’s) functioning. Further attention will be given to
this issue in the discussion later in the paper.

Dysfunctional state vs dysfunctional process definitions

Definitions of dysfunctional trust appear to be underdeveloped. Much of the literature
uses dysfunctional trust and distrust to refer to outcome states in contexts defined by
relations between individuals and organisations based on trust, distrust or both.
In dysfunctional trust, dysfunctionalities arise from the consequences of betrayal and
unmet expectations. Such concerns approximate the idea of trust creating informational
blind spots that are dysfunctional in the context in which they occur (Lehtonen, Kojo,
et al., 2022; Tharaldsen et al., 2010). In contrast, dysfunctional distrust exists as a state
because distrust destroys trust, thus impacting adversely on relations. Such conditions
lead to a lack of disclosure and reporting (e.g. safety reporting: Conchie & Donald,
2008), inability to solve problems and resolve conflicts (Tomlinson & Lewicki, 2006) and
failure to collaborate when it would be beneficial to do so (Boin & Bynander, 2015).
Harms arising from dysfunctional distrust can be detrimental beyond individual
impacts, harming social systems and preventing them from preventing or engaging effec-
tively with crises.
Based on the above, a definition of dysfunctional trust and dysfunctional distrust is
proposed:

(1) Dysfunctional trust: ‘A state of positive expectations regarding another party’s fulfil-
ment of obligations which turn out to be unmet, exposing the trustor and others
to increased risk of harm due to reliance on the trustee to meet their obligation’.
(2) Dysfunctional distrust: ‘A state of negative expectations regarding another party’s
failure to fulfil obligations, which turn out to be unwarranted, leading to failures in
relations, processes, and harmful consequences for individuals and systems’.

The term dysfunctional trusting (Hart et al., 2021) will be used when referring to trust as
a process rather than a state. However, in Hart’s definition of dysfunctional trusting as ‘a
tendency to distrust benign authorities and/or trust strangers’ (Hart et al., 2021, p. 2), the
focus on distrust in this definition appears more like a definition of dysfunctional
6 V. PATENT

distrusting. Their definition does not include situations in which people misplace trust
rather than distrust and is limited to situations involving distrust of authorities or stran-
gers. Because dysfunctional trusting can occur with well-known individuals (e.g. celebri-
ties or politicians), reference to strangers as in Hart’s definition has been replaced
below with the more general term ‘others’. As both distrust and trust can be dysfunc-
tional, separate definitions for dysfunctional trusting and distrusting are proposed:

(1) Dysfunctional trusting: ‘the process of trusting others or organisations who are likely to
act in untrustworthy ways to the detriment of the trustor’.
(2) Dysfunctional distrusting: ‘the process of distrusting others or organisations who are
likely to act in benign, trustworthy ways favourable to the trustor’.

Definition of cognitive bias

Tversky and Kahneman (1974) introduced the concept of cognitive bias, which has been
defined in various ways (Trimmer, 2016). There is evidence of at least sixty cognitive biases
affecting thinking and decision-making (Baron, 2008). Cognitive biases are commonly
framed as a lack of accuracy and impartiality and a form of systematic error in thinking
resulting from constraints and characteristics of information processing. Such con-
ceptions are not without challenges since it is difficult to state what bias is a deviation
from (Hahn & Harris, 2014). Typically, such perspectives imply that bias exists relative to
an optimised ideal based on the actions a rational actor would take to achieve optimal
outcomes. However, this risks conflating processes of bias with their outcomes. Marshall
et al. (2013) highlight the distinction between cognitive and outcome biases. Outcome
biases result in suboptimal outcomes from the perspective of what a rational actor
would do. In contrast, cognitive biases may be optimal (for example, in optimising cogni-
tive effort and reducing complexity), enabling an individual organism to act but risk non-
optimal outcomes.
A potential area for confusion is that error is often assumed as a binary issue: either
there is an error, or there is not. However, the point at which error becomes noticeably
detrimental may be difficult to define because harm or risk may occur incrementally,
leading to cascades of precipitating factors that result in functional failures. To avoid
the term ‘error’ in the definition, cognitive ‘bias’ is defined here more broadly as ‘a sys-
tematic (that is, non-random and, thus, predictable) deviation from rationality in judgment
or decision-making’ (Blanco, 2017, p. 1).
Biases are typically classified according to their source processes. The dominant model,
dual process theory, distinguishes system 1 (automatic, fast, effortless) and system 2
(deliberative, effortful, slow and conscious) processes (Stanovich & West, 2000).
However, theoretical traditions with diverging epistemological and conceptual assump-
tions (Hahn & Harris, 2014) do not universally agree with such classifications. However,
they broadly agree with the dual process conception of bias. For example, hot biases
differ from cold biases in that the former are motivated and directed by emotion in con-
trast to the latter, which are automatic, largely unintentional, and the result of information
processing errors (MacCoun, 1998). To address limitations of the dual processing model,
Stanovich (2011) proposed a tri-process conception of cognition, which posits that
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 7

metacognitive processes for reflection are needed to switch between automatic fast and
slow dual-process systems (systems 1 and 2). In this conception, thinking errors may be
attributable to failures in metacognitive monitoring of individuals’ internal dialogues
rather than solely to automatic or motivated processes. Previous work suggests this
approach may be suitable for preventing decision-making errors by activating meta-cog-
nitive resources during decision-making (McIntyre et al., 2018).
Despite their potential contribution to decision-making failure, one should not assume
that biases are intrinsically bad (Hahn & Harris, 2014). Although biases can lead to poor
decision-making, their psychological function reduces effort, complexity and uncertainty
in otherwise cognitively overwhelming situations. Biases may have few consequences on
daily functioning because, in most situations, social cognition approximates optimised
decision-making models (Fiske & Taylor, 2013). Similarly, trust has few negative conse-
quences in most situations: the default position is for people to trust others initially
(McKnight et al., 1998), a stance that performs well in most social settings, most of the
time reducing complexity and uncertainty and smoothing social exchange. Only in excep-
tions does trusting lead to adverse social and personal outcomes. Therefore, when viewed
as an aspect of social cognition, trust and bias appear isomorphically and functionally
related, both providing efficient and often effective cognitive effort reduction in situations
of social complexity, ambiguity, risk, and uncertainty. This implies functional overlaps,
which require further integration theoretically and will now be addressed in the remain-
der of the paper.

Conceptual integration of bias and trust perspectives

This section focuses on the link between trust and bias as constituents of dysfunctional
trusting and distrusting. This section begins with a short discussion of trust as a form
of bias. The subsections then develop a synthesis of bias and trust perspectives based
on the trust antecedent framework as the organising principle.
Insights from research into confidence tricksters highlight how biases (both hot and
cold) can increase individuals’ vulnerabilities to manipulation to trust dysfunctionally
(Boles et al., 1983; Konnikova, 2016; Lyons & Mehta, 1997; McCaghy & Nogier, 1984).
The distinction between cognitive and affective components found in the bias literature
is also found in trust research (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996; McAllister, 1995). Although concep-
tually distinct, such isomorphism supports the paper’s aim of developing an integrated
view of dysfunctional trust from both trust and bias perspectives.
Trust has previously been described as a persistent positivity bias (Fiske & Taylor,
2013). Yamagishi and Yamagishi (1994) referred to trust as a cognitive bias. A careful
reading of their interpretation suggests that by ‘trust’, they mean a general tendency
to trust, which positively influences evaluations of others. This definition implies that
rather than trust (e.g. the willingness to be vulnerable) being the source of bias, bias
already exists at the antecedent stages of trust (Mayer et al., 1995) in the form of gen-
eralised trust, propensity to trust or dispositional trust, terms that are often used inter-
changeably to refer to this antecedent (for a further discussion of this concept see the
section later in this paper). A potential problem with the Yamagishi and Yamagishi
(1994) description of trust as bias is that it risks conflating trust with its antecedents
(See also Mayer et al., 1995).
8 V. PATENT

More recently, Lewicki and Brinsfield (2019) have considered the integration of trust
within a heuristics approach in which trust and distrust are conceptualised as frames
that lead to biased decision-making. Lewicki and Brinsfield make a case for viewing the
trust frame not just as an interactional construction (e.g. based on the relationship
between parties in trust exchange) but as a cognitive representation. They identify
three main approaches for understanding what is framed. These are: (1) Frames about
issues pertinent to the decision, (2) cognitive representations of the self, others and
relationships and (3) cognitive representations of the anticipated interactional processes.
Table 2 briefly summarises Lewicki and Brinsfield’s organisation of approaches.
There is little to disagree with in Lewicki and Brinsfield’s discussion. However, the inte-
gration between trust and heuristics seems reductive, potentially limiting the exploration
and study of trust. Trust and distrust may be outputs of heuristics and framing rather than
acting merely as frame inputs or content. For example, in job selection, under the avail-
ability heuristic, a candidate may easily be imagined as someone likely to perform well in a
job, and it may then become easier to imagine them to be honest. The difficulty here lies
in deciding when judgements of characteristics relevant to the trustee become activated
(e.g. before the heuristic judgement is made or because of a subsequent process invol-
ving conjunction fallacy, namely the erroneous belief that because the candidate
already seems a good fit with a job, they must also then be trustworthy). Focusing on
specific biases in trust judgements may be more helpful in studying dysfunctional trusting
in specific contexts. The subsequent discussion is therefore aligned more broadly with
cognitive biases and trust (which include some framing biases), showing how trust and
bias may create dysfunctional trust. However, this does not imply that heuristics and
frames are unimportant or irrelevant.
The following four sections are organised according to components of the trust ante-
cedent framework (Mayer et al., 1995). The aim is to show the relevance of work on biases
and trust to theorise and extend the concept of dysfunctional trust. Mayer and colleagues
imply via their definition of trust that the confident expectations generated by trust are
independent of trustors’ ability to control risks. However, their 2007 paper argues that
trust and control may not be mutually exclusive, with control filling a gap between
trust and risk (Schoorman et al., 2007). Therefore, we have included a further section
on trust and control. The order of the section is as follows: (1) Evaluation of trustees,
(2) Trust, vulnerability, and risk, (3) Trust and control, and (4) Personality, trust, and bias.

Perceptions and evaluations of trustees

A core idea in the trust antecedent framework is that trustors evaluate trustees’ trust-
worthiness (framed as competence, benevolence, integrity) based on available

Table 2. Three approaches to studying the content of trust frames.

Conceptual approach
1. Frames about issues pertinent to the decision
2. Cognitive representations of the self, other and
relationships
3. Cognitive representations of the anticipated
interactional processes
(Lewicki & Brinsfield, 2019).
Frames involve
risks, goals, motivation
control, identity, attributions of others’ intention and behaviour,
justice, fairness & reciprocity
judgements regarding relationships, trust vs distrust, evaluations of
self & other’s trustworthiness
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 9

information and general beliefs about trusting others (Mayer et al., 1995). There is abun-
dant evidence that biases influence evaluations of others’ trustworthiness; for example,
via ingratiation effects produced by the trustee (Ziemke & Brodsky, 2015), social desirabil-
ity and attractiveness of the social target in jury and non-jury contexts (Ahola et al., 2009;
Korva et al., 2013; Reilly et al., 2015), articulatory fluency (Zürn & Topolinski, 2017), per-
ceived warmth and competence (Fiske et al., 2007), facial characteristics of the trustee
(Petrican et al., 2014), characteristics of an online name (Silva & Topolinski, 2018) and ego-
centric bias (Posten & Mussweiler, 2019). Such biases may confirm existing beliefs about a
trustor or by framing the trustee to make them seem unlikely to expose or exploit the
trustor’s vulnerabilities.
Bias and trust in performance evaluations. Schafheitle et al. (2016) provide an example
of trust and bias in performance evaluations and their impact on managerial behaviour
and trust. Using qualitative, content-analytic methodology, they found that managers’
trustworthiness judgements of employees were based on judgements of competence,
integrity, and benevolence. Furthermore, trust was also influenced by propensity to
trust, structural, situational factors, and motivational reasons specific to the context
(e.g. the need for reducing managerial workload). Pertinent to the discussion on bias,
they provided evidence that managers’ decision-making errors regarding employee per-
formance evaluations preceded managers’ trust in each employee. They point towards
specific biases (recency effects and false cost–benefit calculus) affecting perceptions of
employee trustworthiness. Such biases in performance evaluations can be dysfunctional
in organisations by impacting performance appraisal (Bellé et al., 2017), non-detection of
false job performance (Dunnion, 2014), and potentially masking risky or counterproduc-
tive behaviours when the mechanisms for checking or monitoring are relaxed. Concern-
ing internal organisational threats resulting from job performance, uncritical acceptance
of trustworthiness judgements can contribute to the non-detection of insider threats by
increasing the tendency of others to remain silent (Rice & Searle, 2022).
Trust, distrust, and stereotypes. Looking at the impact of trust on stereotype bias during
evaluations, one might expect increased trustworthiness to reduce negative stereotype
bias. However, Posten and Mussweiler (2013) conducted a series of experiments exploring
the effects of trust on stereotypes. Using a variety of experimental approaches, they
manipulated the trustworthiness of the target and found judgements to be less stereo-
typed across different targets (women, ethnic minorities, overweight people, and pairs
of objects) when participants were primed via a distrust mindset vs a trust or neutral
mindset. The possible explanation for this counter-intuitive finding is that distrust acti-
vates non-routine information processing (dissimilarity mindset), thus disrupting acti-
vated stereotypes.
Conversely, evaluating people as trustworthy removes doubt and thus maintains
people’s existing erroneous beliefs about a person because it removes the need for
additional processing. Posten and Mussweiler’s (2013) work suggests that trustworthiness
evaluations can be disrupted to avoid trapping trustors in a particular stereotype frame.
However, in practice, such disruption raises ethical problems when making stereotyped
populations appear less trustworthy, as the use of distrust cues to de-bias stereotypes
may amplify negative stereotypes where the stereotype involves distrust (Posten & Muss-
weiler, 2013). Therefore, careful consideration must be given to the context and approach
in which this is applied.
10 V. PATENT

In the previous example, trust impacted stereotype formation. People appear to be

aware of others’ potential biases towards them and trust based on this awareness.
Research from applied studies of recruitment and selection highlights that people
place greater trust in selection processes when selection panels make decisions when
potentially biasing information is removed from the awareness of shortlisting panels
(Klotz et al., 2013) thereby increasing applicants’ perception of fairness and motivation
to apply.
Foddy et al. (2009) present a study of allocation processes highlighting how trustors’
perceptions of stereotyping by others can impact trust. Using economic trust games,
they found that trust in the ‘allocator’ is higher during allocation processes when trustors
believe that the trustee belongs to the same ingroup. Shared ingroup membership
increases trust because people expect favourable behaviours from someone who
shares their group membership, even when the shared ingroup is negatively stereotyped.
In selection processes, risks of stereotyping may be more salient and have more signifi-
cant costs (e.g. not getting a job); these amplify distrust of selection processes when infor-
mation relating to stereotypes becomes known to the selection panel. Foddy et al. (2009)
may apply to selection situations where some applicants may be more likely to apply for
positions if they believe that shared group membership provides some advantages in the
selection process. Examples of this exist during recruitment and selection where candi-
dates’ awareness of recruiters shared educational background (e.g. elite universities or
schools) may result in attracting more applicants who belong to the same group as the
recruiters leading to reduced applicant pool diversity and increased social exclusiveness
(Ashley & Empson, 2013). In the case of recruiting from under-represented groups,
knowing that recruiters are from the same group as an applicant may act as a positive
signal to apply. Such dynamics play out depending on the nature of the stereotypes,
characteristics of parties involved, aspects of the allocation processes and the meaning
of the outcomes to individuals.
Attributional biases and trust. Attributional biases are a distinct class of social biases
referring to ‘errors’ in explaining and inferring one’s own and other people’s motivation
for behaviours (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967; Malle, 2011). Attributions can be counterintui-
tively irrational such that trustors infer trustworthiness from the vulnerabilities arising
from dependence on the trustee (Weber et al., 2004) or judgements of facial character-
istics (criminality: Klatt et al., 2016; integrity: Weber et al., 2004). There are several well-
studied attributional biases (fundamental attribution error; self-serving bias; actor-obser-
ver asymmetry) that are relevant to understanding how people judge other people’s
intentionality, sincerity and cooperativeness in dysfunctional trust situations (Chan,
2009; Malle & Knobe, 1997; Reeder et al., 2004; Tomlinson & Mayer, 2009).
Social cognition employs multiple pathways that operate in a sequentially hierarchical
fashion (Reeder et al., 2004). This process ensures that facets relevant to a situation (the
actor’s goals, motives, and traits) are prioritised (intention over personality inferences,
desire over belief inferences) to assess others’ mental states (Malle & Holbrook, 2012).
This interplay between automatic and consciously controlled components gives rise to
biased judgements about people’s trustworthiness. For example, in Reeder’s study, par-
ticipants were asked to judge a target’s helping behaviour. Participants were primed
with additional information that cued the motivation of the target’s behaviour as either
being obedient or as being self-serving. In a judgement task involving the same
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 11

target’s behaviour, obedient targets were viewed as dispositionally more helpful (and
therefore more benevolent) than self-serving targets. This supports the claim that infer-
ring ulterior motives leads to discounting other evidence of disposition that would other-
wise increase favourable social inferences regarding a trustee’s trustworthiness. Here, one
might find one possible explanation why conspiracy theories’ use of ulterior motives as an
‘argument’ is so effective in reducing trust in the target of the conspiracy and any sources
for counterarguments, thereby inoculating the conspiracy believer against proof to the
contrary.

Trust, vulnerability, and risk

Risk is a necessary condition for conceptualising trust across disciplines (Rousseau et al.,
1998). However, risk means different things to different people (Slovic et al., 1982) and
depends on how aware people are of their vulnerabilities in a risky situation. Vulnerabil-
ities arise from (a) the perceived probability (e.g. certainty/uncertainty) of an event on the
one hand and (b) the extent and characteristics (real or perceived) of the threat of loss
involved in the risk on the other. How people frame risk is an important factor in risk per-
ception (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). Framing distorts risk perception depending on the
type of risk, frame characteristics, the nature of the decision task (Kühberger, 1998), per-
ception of chance in determining the outcome (Bohnet & Zeckhauser, 2004) and other
variables (e.g. age: Best & Charness, 2015; personality: Lauriola et al., 2014).
Siegrist et al. (2021) carried out a study looking at the role of trust in perceptions of
COVID-related health risks. They used two measures of trust: general trust and social
trust (a measure that operationalised beliefs in the trustworthiness of government) and
found that while general trust decreased risk perceptions, high trust in government
tended to increase perceived health risk regarding COVID. Siegrist et al. (2021) argue
that methodological issues are important considerations in selecting scales for research
as measures of general trust and trust in government tap different aspects of trust. Con-
sidering the COVID context of their study, high trust in government increases the likeli-
hood that public health messages are taken seriously, thus creating more salient
perceptions of health risk. General trust relates to how much, in general, people can
trust others, and this might reflect general feelings of safety and security regarding
risks stemming from other people (for example, trusting that others would self-isolate
if testing positive), resulting in decreases in perceived health risk. As the case of Siegrist
et al. highlights, different types of trust can generate high certainty in parallel but lead to
different implications for risk, some of which may be dysfunctional (for example, taking
risks based on trust in other people’s health-related behaviour).
Das and Teng (2004) portray trust and risk as mirror images of each other. Here, risk and
trust have inverse relationships. For example, if subjective goodwill trust is high, relational
risk is perceived to be low. If subjective competence-based trust is high, perceived per-
formance risk is low. In this framework, trust and risk perceptions are updated when rel-
evant information becomes known. The reciprocal paths between trust and risk facilitate
biased social perceptions; perception of risk may reciprocally affect goodwill- and compe-
tence-based trust. Bias in such trade-offs in Das & Teng’s model is exemplified in studies
where cost–benefit evaluations can be shown to lead to errors. For example, as Schafhei-
tle et al. (2016) have shown, when risk control measures are rejected due to a biased cost–
12 V. PATENT

benefit calculus, risks resulting from a lack of control are underestimated, and benefits
overemphasised, leading to an increase in the tendency to base decisions on perceived
employee trustworthiness, but without adequate risk control in place.
From a risk-based perspective, trust choices follow a mostly non-monotonic logic
pathway. In non-monotonic decisions, the default ‘conclusion’ is adjusted as new infor-
mation, which challenges the original conclusion, is added (Nebel, 2001). This matches
the process by which trust is reduced from a default position (e.g. initial trust: McKnight
et al., 1998) as negative information (e.g. regarding vulnerabilities and risk) becomes avail-
able. While default trust acts as a form of positivity bias in a situation of risk, negativity bias
and its over-attention to negative information override the more favourable expectations
at the start of a relationship. Together, these processes might explain why trust declines
over time since a consistent bias for attending to negative events would incrementally
impact the initially more favourable view existing at the beginning of a relationship
and thus gradually expose greater levels of risk that were not visible earlier in the
process leading to loss of goodwill over time.
Eiser and White (2005), studying negativity bias, note that positive information requires
greater levels of confirmation than negative information, thus making it easier to confirm
negatives. This might help explain the complex ways in which confirmatory bias often
impacts trust appraisals of negatively construed information, for example, by amplifying
the valence of perceived risks focalised in contemporary public discourses regarding risks,
including conspiracy theories (e.g. vaccines and telecommunications during COVID19)
and misinformation campaigns.

Trust and control

It has been stated that trust is only necessary for situations in which there is no control
over the outcomes (Leifer & Mills, 1996). Other theorists have viewed trust and control
as parallel concepts (Das & Teng, 1998) because trust and control can increase confidence
in expected outcomes. Furthermore, low trust and high mistrust may increase the need
for control by the trustor (Golin et al., 1977), while a lack of control amplifies the need
for trust.
Control is subject to bias through the tendency of individuals to perceive illusory
control (Langer, 1975; Thompson, 1999). Findings suggest that people are more likely
to overestimate personal control in familiar situations, specifically those focused on
achieving desired or needed outcomes in which they have some agency. Perceived
control is subject to optimism bias for various outcomes, with greater optimism
leading to a greater sense of control (Klein & Helweg-Larsen, 2002). Based on these
insights, one can argue that while trust is only necessary for situations where the
trustor has no primary control, the trustor’s reliance on a trustee may well be dependent
on the illusory perception that by trusting, the trustor gains secondary control over the
outcomes produced by the trustee (Klein & Helweg-Larsen, 2002).
Trustees’ lack of control may be relevant as to whether they can maintain their obli-
gations to the trustor and whether they should engage in trust exchange in the first
place (Banerjee et al., 2006). However, a trustee’s perceptions of their control may also
be prone to illusion effects (for example, in financial trading: Bansal, 2020; Fenton-
O’Creevy et al., 2003). In such cases, control vital to the exchange may not exist or fail
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 13

to materialise. Here a trustee can attempt to increase control over a situation to honour
the terms of the exchange or seek to control the visibility of their failure to retain it. Alter-
natively, and more ethically, rather than seeking to create an impression of control, per-
ceiving uncertainty over control may lead the trustee to consider disengaging from a trust
exchange to avoid the reputational risks that could result from failure.
There is not much data on trustors’ perception of trustees’ lack of control of risks,
although study of regulators’ perceptions of regulatees’ intention to control risk highlights
the importance of such perceptions (Wiig & Tharaldsen, 2012). In regulatory environments,
regulator distrust may be met with attempts to achieve greater control through rigid
control strategies (Engen & Lindøe, 2019). However, these may backfire as they signal
excessive distrust resulting in feelings of resentment and betrayal (Medina, 2020) and redu-
cing trust between regulators and regulatees (Wiig & Tharaldsen, 2012).

Bias, trust and personality

Explaining trust as a function of people’s personality characteristics is a popular con-
ception of why some individuals are more trusting. Propensity to trust (P2T), sometimes
referred to as dispositional trust, general trust, or trusting tendency, has been the domi-
nant model of personality in trust research. It is regarded as a trait-like antecedent to trust
that can be defined as a basic stance toward trusting (McKnight et al., 2002). A variety of
personality traits have been linked with propensity to trust (Evans & Revelle, 2008). Con-
sistent evidence shows a link between P2T and the agreeableness trait in the Five Factor
model of personality (McCrae & John, 1992) as a positive orientation towards trusting
(Mooradian et al., 2006). Agreeableness reflects how well people get on with others in
interpersonal contexts (Chmielewski & Morgan, 2013) and is related to conformity with
group norms that might lead to bias.
P2T appears to act analogously to an information filter (Govier, 1994; Searle et al., 2011)
which influences the selection of information in favour of trusting others. Evidence for this
idea stems from studies showing that P2T moderates relationships between organis-
ational variables that are relevant to trust, such as justice perceptions (Colquitt et al.,
2006), support and satisfaction (Poon et al., 2007), and risk (Chen et al., 2015). However,
while the idea might imply P2T biases judgement and decision-making, no clear evidence
demonstrates a single mechanism implied by the information filter analogy, suggesting
that underlying processes generate the filtering effects.
By drawing attention to bias and the processes that produce it, research on P2T may
become better focused on the cognitive and affective mechanisms that create the mod-
erating effects observed empirically. A more in-depth understanding and reappraisal of
P2T may be possible in terms of its nomological relationships with other constructs (Cron-
bach & Meehl, 1955 ) rather than a more reductionist view of P2T as a singular disposi-
tional cause of bias. Instead, P2T may be better described as a hybrid form construct
(McEvily & Tortoriello, 2011), a construct in which several interacting and dynamic pro-
cesses, for example, optimism bias (Frazier et al., 2013) or personality factors such as
agreeableness produce biasing effects. Thus, rather than P2T being a singular process
or trait, a better way to conceptualise it may be as a proxy for a combination of cognitive
and social biases that contribute to a more favourable assessment of people’s
trustworthiness.
14 V. PATENT

Recently Hart et al. (2021) suggested a link between dysfunctional trust and dark triad
personality types (machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism), leading those high in
dark triad traits to be more gullible to trusting dysfunctionally. In contrast, unlike dark
triad traits, P2T is not connected to gullibility (Rotter, 1980) and its connection with dys-
functional trusting is not well established. While there are a range of measures to assess
the influence of personality antecedents, establishing their relationship with dysfunc-
tional trust is dependent operationally on (a) showing there is an antecedent (e.g. P2T,
dark triad) and (b) demonstrating an outcome that is dysfunctional in the context in
which it occurs. The current lack of evidence regarding a relationship between P2T and
dysfunctional trust suggests potential avenues for research into trust and personality,
extending theory with a closer examination of how personality-based processes might
lead to dysfunctional trust outcomes. Attention to how personality impacts dysfunctional
trust and distrust may provide valuable insights for team and leadership training and
recruitment to ensure that teams are balanced and have sufficiently diverse perspectives
for evaluating decisions.

Methodological considerations
The main aim of this paper was to provide an integrative perspective of dysfunctional
trust within the theoretical literature on trust and bias. Attention to research method-
ologies will be provided briefly next.
Economic game methodologies have dominated research in the systematic study
of trust and bias, contributing to the methodological convergence in experimental
trust and bias research (Alós-Ferrer & Farolfi, 2019). Critiques of experimental game
methodologies suggest these approaches lack ecological validity, although results
of studies linking results from experimental and non-experimental studies of trust
appear to produce consistently robust results (Banerjee et al., 2021). While critiques
of these approaches challenge the use of trust games in real-world settings, trust
games have practical utility in revealing otherwise hidden aspects of individuals’
private worlds that cannot be observed via self-report measures or interviews (Pisor
et al., 2020). An emergent view across bias, trust and behavioural economic research
is that a detailed understanding of trust requires multi-method approaches spanning
quantitative and qualitative approaches (Hodgson & Cofta, 2009; Kramer, 2015). Simi-
larly, non-quantitative approaches can contribute to understanding bias in trust con-
texts (Diary method: Gibbons et al. 2022; Critical incident technique: Keers et al.,
2015).
While surveys are popular in trust research and utilised extensively in research on
public attitudes and various organisational settings, survey-based work is harder to oper-
ationalise in studies of bias. To demonstrate bias, one must be able to show the deviation
from an unbiased performance which may be problematic with cross-sectional design.
Survey participants may not be aware of their bias or may be influenced to present them-
selves in a more favourable light. Survey results can be significantly affected by socially
biased responding, resulting in variable distributions of some measures that are signifi-
cantly non-normal. Such threats to validity apply to both experimental work and
surveys on trust (Thielmann et al., 2016 ). It is beyond the scope of this paper to
discuss the technical solutions for such issues. However, considering diverse multi-
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 15

method approaches to the study of trust and bias is an essential step for operationalising
trust and bias in the same studies, overcoming methodological limitations and method
biases that systematically distort our understanding of the link between trust, bias and
other variables of interest.
Interactions between context and methodologies must be considered carefully in
studying dysfunctional trust and distrust. Dysfunctional distrust may be associated with
significant reactance (Lumineau, 2017; Soveri et al., 2020), which may impact data collec-
tion. In organisational settings, this can lead to tendencies to misattribute responsibility
for dysfunctionality, denial, or faking, making it difficult to separate the phenomenon
from its subjective experience. There is a lack of published survey tools that assess dys-
functional trust in individuals, let alone audit organisations and their cultures for elements
of dysfunctional trust. Survey measures have been used in studies of dysfunctional trust,
although these are typically tailored to the context and are often not validated against the
broader methodological developments in trust research (Dietz & Den Hartog, 2006;
McEvily & Tortoriello, 2011). This conceptual and measurement gap highlights avenues
for methodological integration and innovation that could improve the quality of
measures and conceptualisations of dysfunctional trust in line with those used in estab-
lished trust research.

Concluding discussion
This integrative review provided insights regarding the relationship between trust and
bias in dysfunctional trust, framed by a focus on the constituents of the trust antecedent
model. Together this contributes an answer to the question of why and how people might
trust or distrust dysfunctionally. As outlined, bias in information processing leads to selec-
tive filtering and discounting of cues that can attenuate perceptions of the trustee’s trust-
worthiness, mitigate or amplify perceptions of risk and vulnerability, and impact
perceived trustor and trustee control. Fundamentally these processes create the subjec-
tive reasons for trusting or distrusting, regardless of whether trust or distrust in each situ-
ation is rightful or misplaced. Considering trust as the output of subconscious cognitive
and affective processes is not new. However, a spotlight on bias provides a more refined
perspective of antecedent processes that lead to trust, including risk framing, vulner-
ability, and control, which can produce dysfunctional trust (or distrust).
The review also highlighted one of the fundamental challenges with integrating trust
and bias perspectives, namely the levels-of-analysis problem, whereby depending on
which concepts are tapped, different elements come to the fore. Concepts belonging
to trust theories are often analysed as relational qualities, whereas bias formulations
are typically more internally focused on information processing, motivation, and goals.
Whether trust is a bias, or an output of biased processing is at the heart of this
problem. However, as some of the reviewed work highlights, bias occurs in the context
of the messiness of social exchange, making it difficult to identify, even more so, since
bias and dysfunctional outcomes may be effects intended by hostile actors.
While past theorists have referred to trust as a slippery (Nooteboom, 2000) or elusive
(Gambetta, 1988) concept, the perspectives offered in this paper suggest that trust is
elastic as a theoretical concept. This differs from Bohnet et al.’s (2010) use of the term
trust elasticity, referring to responsiveness to changes in expected economic returns.
16 V. PATENT

Instead, elasticity emerges because trust (and bias) can appear at different stages of the
process as antecedents or outputs, depending on context and situational dynamics. When
considering trust and bias as variables within the process of dysfunctional trusting, this
exposes the often-complex ways in which trust and bias occur in workplaces and other
contexts leading to poor decision-making and dysfunctional consequences.
As a further example, consider regulatory enforcement practices in medical practice or
the petroleum industry as described by Wiig and Tharaldsen (2012). Regulators may have
separate explanations of compliance violations that may focus differentially on motives,
attitudes, and capabilities of regulatees – combinations of these present different path-
ways towards dysfunctional outcomes (e.g. accidents, medical errors). Regulatory non-
compliance in these contexts may result from how trust, distrust, and bias are expressed
by all parties within the context. As a result, regulators need to employ ‘diverse combi-
nations of trust and distrust depending on the context and type of regulatee [they] are
approaching’ (Wiig & Tharaldsen, 2012, p. 3045). Distrust of an overconfident medical
diagnosis is functional, but too much distrust can harm the relations between regulators
and regulatees. Awareness of bias and trust can provide a more nuanced understanding
of such contexts.
While the review was primarily concerned with interpersonal patterns of trusting, in
dynamic contexts, trust often involves the extension of trust or distrust via intermediaries,
for example, word of mouth and third parties, or symbolically by the presence of symbolic
markers of trust. Understanding bias and trust may be particularly relevant to network and
system researchers interested in dysfunctional trust since processes that filter and system-
atically select information may produce noticeably dysfunctional effects at scale rather
than at the interpersonal or small group level. Such dynamicity adds considerable com-
plexity to the study of dysfunctional trust and distrust. Studies of the QANON phenom-
enon in the US provide an insight into the complexity and dysfunctionalities of
network trust. QANON, an ideologically right-wing political movement, recruits individ-
uals into epistemologically baseless conspiracy theories. Its pervasiveness is sustained
through social media and the radicalisation of individuals (Moskalenko, 2021) via the cre-
ation of epistemic bubbles that produce a shared alternate reality driven by distrust of the
establishment. Within such bubbles, distrust of benign authorities will appear to be a
coherent norm (Nguyen, 2020), leading to erosion of trust in elected governments
because the effects of individual distrust are amplified across the network.

Conceptual limitations
This paper has focussed extensively on cognitive aspects of the trust process that point
towards interpersonal trusting as an explanatory level. Much of the literature on dysfunc-
tional trust and distrust sits thematically in administrative, governance, regulatory and
safety systems rather than in dyadic relationships. This raises the question of how well
this paper’s explanatory level applies in these contexts. However, based on a similar
issue regarding their integrative model of trust, Schoorman et al. (2007) have argued
that the trust antecedent model (which was used for framing this review) translates
well from interpersonal to higher levels of analysis. However, they recognise methodo-
logical and conceptual tensions that may require further scholarship. More recently,
multi-level trust models (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012) have highlighted complexities arising
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 17

from multi-level and multi-referent trust. Creating conceptual clarity of dysfunctional trust
and distrust at an individual level of its antecedent process provides an insight into how
trust might travel between organisational levels and across referents. In organisations,
patterns of structural relations and power amplify dyadic processes. For example, an indi-
vidual regulatory officials’ distrust resulting from their evaluation of risk and trustworthi-
ness of a team they inspect may directly impact relations between the individual regulator
and the team. However, the officials’ evaluation also feeds into the broader regulatory
system by contributing to the organisation-level evaluation by the regulatory body –
the control measures implemented in response to regulator distrust shape subsequent
relations within and between organisations within such a system. Excessive controls
amplify distrust signals in regulatory environments (Wiig & Tharaldsen, 2012), which
can lead to dysfunctional employee responses (e.g. sabotage, revenge; Kramer, 1999). It
is beyond the scope of this review to address the role of feedback in how distrust and
trust travel dynamically across organisational levels and boundaries more fully.
However, the conceptual clarification offered in this present review may be helpful to
researchers interested in considering dysfunctionality within multi-level theories of
trust and distrust.
When defined as a state or as a process, dysfunctional trust might refer to a specific
class of dysfunctional outcomes or processes in which trust or distrust act as precursors
for dysfunctional choices made by trustors. However, describing outcomes of trusting
as dysfunctional depends on whether there is a clear, precisely accurate function in the
first place (Khan, 2002). Conceptually dysfunctional trust can be problematic because
trust, by its nature, does not offer guarantees, and there is always a probability that trust-
ing will produce a harmful outcome. Thus, whether a trust outcome is dysfunctional at the
level of unmet positive or negative expectations can only be known after a trustor has
trusted or distrusted. Thus, the dysfunction appears to be primarily located in the
outcome rather than in the process of trust or distrust.
A related issue raised by one of the reviewers for this paper is that from an uncertainty
perspective, trust may be dysfunctional if it fails in its function to reduce complexity
enough to act, regardless of whether those actions prove wrong. This issue touches fun-
damentally on the Luhmannian view regarding what functions trust serves and what it is
as a process. There may not be many situations where trust fails outright to generate cer-
tainty since initial trust is usually high (McKnight et al., 1998). This suggests that failure to
reduce uncertainty may be an incremental condition, for example, with trust eroding over
time. Sudden failure of trust to reduce uncertainty may occur under rupture in relation-
ships, betrayal or other breaches in trust, whereby trust as a taken-for-granted basis for
a relationship suddenly fails in maintaining certainty and is replaced by distrust.
However, as the cognitive system is optimised to make sense of the world, certainties
may only be temporarily disrupted.
As discussed in this paper, certainty is generated from constituent affective and cog-
nitive processes activated during trusting, which lead to positive or negative expectations
and their respective subjective probabilities. If these processes fail to generate the cer-
tainty required for positive expectations, the response may be to switch to processes
that generate certainties for negative expectations. The coactivation of simultaneous pro-
cesses during trusting ensures that individuals are likely to establish some form of uncer-
tainty reduction and basis for action even when trust and distrust themselves fail to
18 V. PATENT

resolve uncertainty. Behavioural responses such as denial, dismissal and minimising of

information may achieve uncertainty reduction; they are epistemically dysfunctional
because they deviate more significantly from the reality of a situation (e.g. just because
one denies a complex fact, or an uncertain risk does not mean the basis for the fact or
risk ceases to exist).
By discerning the antecedent process of dysfunctional trusting (rather than dysfunc-
tional trust) from its outcomes, the present paper sought to overcome the difficulty of
specifying the locus of dysfunctionality: It may be in the process, the outcome, or both.
The separation of dysfunctional trust from dysfunctional trusting and its antecedents
(Figure 1 below) is practically and theoretically useful, clarifying potential conceptual pro-
blems in research and theory.

Recommendations
This review has provided some theoretical groundwork for developing a more integrated
view of dysfunctional trust, drawing on empirical and theoretical work on trust and bias.
There are several clear recommendations for future research and practice:

(1) Methodological diversity. More diverse methodologies are needed to avoid measure-
ment traps created by method effects. Dysfunctional trust is a property of systems
with many moving parts. As the examples show, dysfunctional trust evolves due to
interactions in networks, systems, and cultures that can amplify individual-level
trust, distrust, and bias. While studies of bias and trust using traditional methodologi-
cal paradigms are helpful for detailed studies of bias or other trust constituents, dys-
functionality is difficult to operationalise or measure in a dysfunctional context.
Therefore, work on dysfunctional trust may benefit from applied, qualitative work,
including discourse and thematic analyses, ethnographic and action research
approaches, that can account for individuals’ subjective experience of bias and
trust during dysfunctional trusting as well as understanding the context-dependent
meanings attached to acts of trusting and dysfunction.
(2) Bias as an antecedent to trust. Trust as a bias. Studies are needed to operationalise bias
as an antecedent to trust/distrust and, conversely, trust or its constituents as a source
of bias. The concept of P2T offers a potentially rich area for work on bias and trust in
the context of dysfunctional trust. The advantage of such work lies in providing
further empirical evidence of the relationship between types of bias and constructs
used in trust research. One avenue for work would be to look at developing nomolo-
gical nets of constructs in trust research that could make the link between trust and
cognitive and other biases more explicit. A promising and innovative approach to
nomological network analysis may be found in recent approaches to psychological
network analysis (Fried et al., 2017; Jones et al., 2018) that can be used in studying
networks of constructs in complex settings, but which has so far not been applied
to research on trust.
(3) Conceptual development of dysfunctional trust and distrust. For the reasons outlined
above, the concept of dysfunctional trust needs further refinement. While this
review has focussed on mostly individual psychological elements of trust and distrust
leading to dysfunctional outcomes, more work is needed on group and system-level
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH
Figure 1. Dysfunctional trust – Bias and trust process model. (T) = consequence of processes involved in trusting; (D) = consequence of processes involved in
distrusting.

19
20 V. PATENT

processes. This review has provided a basis for theorising that could enhance under-
standing of dysfunctional trust and trust more generally across levels. An exciting
question building on Schoorman et al. (2007) and Fulmer and Gelfand (2012) is
how systemic and organisational level processes might reflect or amplify trust pro-
cesses at lower levels leading to emergent and often unintended dysfunction at
higher levels.
(4) Focus on remedies. Epistemic dysfunctionalities, including vaccine hesitancy, climate
change scepticism, and populism, are significant problems for the world in the
twenty-first century and efforts to remedy them are still in short supply. More atten-
tion to remedies for dysfunctional trusting is therefore required. Evidence from
debiasing research highlights the difficulty of preventing errors in judgement and
decision-making (Kahneman, 2011) as many processes are automatic, operating
outside of awareness. Work on meta-cognitive processes (Stanovich, 2011) may be
of particular interest in this context for developing practical educational interven-
tions. Examples of applied work can be found in Van der Linden and colleagues’
work on public inoculation against climate misinformation (Van der Linden et al.,
2017). Their work draws on an understanding of social cognition and trust, which
appears to activate meta-cognitive understanding of the intentions of misinformation
practices used by climate change deniers. A focus on bias and trust could help
develop similar educational approaches in other domains and help improve aware-
ness of bias, critical thinking, monitoring, and other meta-cognitive strategies to
enhance epistemic awareness and protect individuals and organisations from being
trapped by their cognitions and trust during decision-making.
(5) What is functional or dysfunctional? The functionalist perspective implied in dysfunc-
tional trust also requires careful attention. Who decides what is functional or dys-
functional and when dysfunctions require repair? At what point does trust or
distrust cross a threshold to become dysfunctional? Critical and radical perspectives
are needed to move beyond normative functionalist epistemological and ontologi-
cal paradigms evident in research on trust repair (Gillespie & Siebert, 2018). In a
complete conceptualisation, issues of power, authority and influence are likely to
be important areas of work, especially when trust and distrust have become
sources of polarisation stemming from the intersection between epistemic issues
and identity that may impede attempts to reduce impacts of the social divisions
this has created.
(6) Focus on integrity and ethics. Politics, governance, and social media continue to create
and maintain dysfunctional trust and distrust dysfunctionalities. It would be naïve to
assume that there is a single approach or even that such approaches will work to
disrupt dysfunctionalities. However, a concentrated focus and public debate regard-
ing integrity, fairness, justice, and ethics in all areas of public life may be needed to
reduce harms stemming from systemic trust and distrust. Such efforts require political
will and honest self-appraisal, which may be in short supply.

This work will resonate with researchers in trust and decision-making interested in
tackling the complex challenges arising from dysfunctional trust and distrust. The hope
is that it will stimulate research that engages the methodological and conceptual
issues this paper has presented. Can we address the global challenges of our age?
 JOURNAL OF TRUST RESEARCH 21

Maybe. By understanding better, the constituents of trusting and distrusting that lead to
dysfunctional outcomes, trust researchers may be able to reduce the deleterious effects
that erosion of trust produces in solving the problems facing people, organisations and
societies.

Acknowledgements
Dr Madeleine Knightley and Dr Jem Warren for reading earlier drafts of this paper, Dr Paul Piwek for
the discussion of non-monotonic logics and for the unknown reviewers whose feedback helped to
shape the final structure and narrative.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Volker Patent is a Chartered Psychologist and working in the fields of Business Psychology, Sustain-
ability, Community Engagement and Coaching. He currently holds a position as lecturer in the
School of Psychology at the Open University, where he is Employability lead for the Faculty of
Arts and Social Sciences. He obtained his PhD in 2015 from the Open University and previously
has held teaching roles at Bedfordshire University, Putteridgebury management centre, worked
freelance as a trainer, consultant and assessment specialist in industry, medical recruitment and
public engagement. His research specifically focuses on trust and personality in organisations, men-
toring and coaching, and trust in individual and organisational decision-making. He is currently
working on psychological aspects of climate change. His research appears in the British Journal
of Social Work, in Searle & Skinner (2011) Trust in Human Resource Management, the Journal of
Trust Research and he has had conference papers accepted at FINT, EAWOP, ENESER, and the Inter-
national Congress on Assessment Center Methods.

ORCID
Volker Patent http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8905-7502

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