Understanding ‘interpersonal trust’ from a human factors perspective: insights from situation awareness and the lens model

Abstract

Trust has become a hot topic in the academic world in the past few decades. Authors from a variety of fields, especially human factors, have developed field-specific approaches to understanding trust. However, in the field of human factors, researchers usually take the approach of modelling how trust is formed between humans and automation. There is still a gap in the human factors literature with regard to frameworks for supporting the development of socio-technical systems where interpersonal trust is a desired design output. Through the combination of mainstream trust literature with human factors frameworks such as situation awareness and the lens model, we have developed a model that not only supports the understanding of interpersonal trust formation and the design of systems that foster the development of interpersonal trust, but also fills an existing gap in the trust modelling literature concerning the detailed description of the interpersonal trust state formation process.

Keywords:

• trust
• confidence
• model
• situation awareness
• lens model
• collaboration

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.