Trust

1
Trust

• As a key element in the social order
• Driving down the street
• As a key element in the cognitive order

2
Trust dependency of the social order

• Relying on one another
• Goffman our dealings with one another have a
  promissory character
• Giddens modernity as shift from familiarity as
  basis for trust to impersonal systems, reliable
  systems of expertise (e.g., airplane, medicine)
• Credentialing
• Sanctions, enforcement mechanisms
• Mixed
• Access points to expert systems do you trust the
  institution of medicine or your doctor?

3
Kinds of Trust

• Common distinction
• Cognitive approaches
• risk assessment, judgments of a persons or
  institutions competence and reliability
• reliance, on ones disposition to act based on
  trust in another.
• Emotional approached focus on trust as a feeling
  rather than a cognitive assessment.
• Another way to distinguish among notions of trust
  is to look at types of interpersonal exchanges or
  cooperation.
• division of labor, contracts, and exchanges.
• sociability the role of trust in the social
  order, civic engagement, and the relationship of
  trust to citizenship, cooperation, reciprocity,
  and morality
• epistemological trust

4
Shapin, A Social History of Truth Trust
dependency of the cognitive order

• This book draws attention to some moral aspects
  of the collective nature of knowledge.
  Different members of community hold knowledge one
  may need to draw upon gt moral bonds between
  them.The word I propose to use to express this
  moral bond is trust. p. 7
• His task to demonstrate
• The ineradicable role of what others tell us
• how reliance upon testimony achieves invisibility

5
Epistemological trust

• Expertise experts are knowledgeable
• Cognitive authority those whom we would ask for
  advice.
• Astrology we might grant that a person is an
  expert astrologer, but not follow her advice.
• Accepting others testimony is, among other
  things, a strategy of cognitive efficiency.
• Trust avoids the costs of developing or verifying
  knowledge claims on our own.
• P. Wilson points only that only a few knowledge
  claims are of sufficient importance for us to
  engage in detailed examination. We generally
  dont actually evaluate many claims we wait
  until we need to decide whom or what to believe,
  and then weigh the costs of evaluating claims
  against the penalties of believing wrongly.

6
How do we decide?

• How we decide on criteria for trustability?
• How we decide whom to trust?

7
Epistemic communities

• Shared beliefs What everyone knows
• Practices How things should be done
• Indicators
• E.g., education, institutional affiliation
• Assessment by trusted others
• Infinite regression?

8
CONSUMER WEBWATCH GUIDELINES

• http//www.consumerwebwatch.org/bestpractices/inde
  x.html

9
1 Identity

• Web sites should clearly disclose the physical
  location where they are produced, including an
  address, a telephone number or email address.
• Sites should clearly disclose their ownership,
  private or public, naming their parent company.
• Sites should clearly disclose their purpose and
  mission.

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2 Advertising and Sponsorships

• Sites should clearly distinguish advertising from
  news and information, using labels or other
  visual means. This includes "inhouse" advertising
  or crosscorporate ad sponsorships. Search
  engines, shopping tools and portals should
  clearly disclose paid resultplacement
  advertising, so consumers may distinguish between
  objective search results and paid ads.
• Sites should clearly disclose relevant business
  relationships, including sponsored links to other
  sites. For example A site that directs a reader
  to another site to buy a book should clearly
  disclose any financial relationship between the
  two sites.
• Sites should identify sponsors. The site's
  sponsorship policies should be clearly noted in
  accompanying text or on an "About Us" or "Site
  Center" page.

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3 Customer Service

• Sites engaged in consumer transactions should
  clearly disclose relevant financial relationships
  with other sites, particularly when these
  relationships affect the cost to a consumer.
• Sites should clearly disclose all fees charged,
  including service, transaction and handling fees,
  and shipping costs. This information should be
  disclosed before the ordering process begins.
• Sites should clearly state and enforce policies
  for returning unwanted items or canceling
  transactions or reservations.

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4 Corrections

• Sites should diligently seek to correct false,
  misleading or incorrect information.
• Sites should prominently display a page or
  section of the site where incorrect information
  is corrected or clarified.
• Sites should strive to mark content with its
  published date when failing to do so could
  mislead consumers.
• Sites should clearly state their policy on a
  consumer's rights if a purchase is made based on
  incorrect information on the site.

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5 Privacy

• Site privacy policies should be easy to find and
  clearly, simply stated.
• Sites should clearly disclose how personal data
  from site visitors and customers will be used.
  Personal data includes name, address, phone
  number and credit card number.
• Sites should disclose whether they use
  browsertracking mechanisms such as "cookies," and
  other technologies such as Web beacons, bugs and
  robots.
• Sites should explain how data collected from them
  will be used.
• Sites should notify customers of changes to
  privacy policies, and provide an easy optout
  alternative.

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Reasons why one site more credible than another
http//www.consumerwebwatch.org/news/report3_credi
bilityresearch/stanfordPTL_abstract.htm

• Design Look 46.1
• Information Design/Structure 28.5
• Information Focus 25.1
• Company Motive 15.5
• Information Usefulness 14.8
• Information Accuracy 14.3
• Name Recognition and Reputation 14.1
• Advertising 13.8
• Information Bias 11.6
• Writing Tone 9.0
• Identity of Site Operator 8.8
• Site Functionality 8.6
• Customer Service 6.4
• Past Experience with Site 4.6
• Information Clarity 3.7
• Performance on Test by User 3.6
• Readability 3.6
• Affiliations 3.4

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Key findings

• when people assessed a real Web site's
  credibility they did not use rigorous criteria
• people claimed that certain elements were vital
  to a Web site's credibility (e.g., having a
  privacy policy). But people rarely used these
  rigorous criteria (e.g., they almost never
  referred to a site's privacy policy.)

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Key Findings II

• the average consumer paid far more attention to
  the superficial aspects of a site, such as visual
  cues, than to its content.
• 46.1 assessed the credibility of sites based in
  part on the appeal of the overall visual design
  of a site, including layout, typography, font
  size and color schemes.
• This occurred more often with some categories of
  sites then others.
• finance (54.6), search engines (52.6), travel
  (50.5), and ecommerce sites (46.2), health
  (41.8), news (39.6), and nonprofit (39.4)
  sites.
• In comparison, a parallel study revealed that
  health and finance experts were far less
  concerned about the surface aspects of these
  industryspecific types of sites and more
  concerned about the breadth, depth, and quality
  of a site's information.

17
Topics Not Found

• Small numbers of consumers registered credibility
  assessment comments that related to Consumer
  WebWatch's five general guidelines for improving
  credibility on the Web
• 8.8 referred to the identity of the site or its
  operator.
• 6.4 made comments about a site's customer
  service or related policies
• 2.3 referred to a site's sponsorships
• people mentioned privacy policies in less than 1
  of their comments.
• We found no comments about correcting false or
  misleading information of Web sites in this study.

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Summary

• Participants seemed to make their
  credibilitybased decisions about the people or
  organization behind the site based upon the
  site's overall visual appeal.
• Argh!