Combining economic social-psychological and sociological approaches to trust this book
provides a general theoretical framework to causally explain conditional and unconditional
trust it also presents an experimental test of the corresponding integrative model and its
predictions. Broadly it aims at advancing a cognitive turn in trust research by highlighting
the importance of (1) an actor´s context-dependent definition of the situation and (2) the
flexible and dynamic degree of rationality involved. In essence trust is as multi-faceted as
there are cognitive routes that take us to the choice of a trusting act. Therefore variable
rationality has to be incorporated as an orthogonal dimension to the typological space of
trust. The theory presents an analytically tractable model the empirical test combines trust
games high- and low-incentive conditions framing manipulations and psychometric measurements
and is complemented by decision-time analyses.
