Bitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in... Show moreBitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in particular the view that bitcoin is socially constructed, non-concrete, and genuinely exists. If bitcoin is socially constructed, then one may worry that this reintroduces trust in the communities responsible for the social construction. Although we may have to rely on certain communities, I argue that social construction doesn’t imply a demand for trust because the relevant communities don’t take on any relevant commitments. Bitcoin is indeed trust-free. Show less
In this article, we inquire to what extent different manifestations of trust are associated with public support for evidence informed policy making (EIPM). We present the results of a cross... Show moreIn this article, we inquire to what extent different manifestations of trust are associated with public support for evidence informed policy making (EIPM). We present the results of a cross-sectional survey conducted in the peak of the second COVID-19 wave in six Western democracies: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United States (N = 8749). Our findings show that public trust in scientific experts is generally related to positive attitudes toward evidence-informed policy making, while the opposite is the case for trust in governments and fellow citizens. Interestingly, citizens' assessment of government responses to COVID-19 moderates the relationship between trust and attitudes toward EIPM. Respondents who do rather not trust their governments or their fellow citizens are more in favor of EIPM if they evaluate government responses negatively. These findings suggest that attitudes toward EIPM are not only related to trust, but also strongly depend on perceived government performance. Show less
The overarching goal of this thesis was to examine the behavioral, computational, and neural mechanisms underlying social learning in adolescence. The first aim was to examine developmental... Show moreThe overarching goal of this thesis was to examine the behavioral, computational, and neural mechanisms underlying social learning in adolescence. The first aim was to examine developmental patterns across adolescence of two forms of social learning: (1) learning about other people, specifically, whether they are (un)cooperative and (un)trustworthy, and (2) learning for other people (prosocial learning) to know what actions may benefit or help others. I made use of multiple experimental paradigms based on well-known economic games and/or probabilistic reinforcement learning paradigms to assess these forms of social learning. Secondly, I aimed to examine underlying mechanisms and factors that account for age-related and individual differences in social learning. Applying computational modeling and functional neuroimaging as additional tools contributed to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms and how these develop across adolescence. The findings in this thesis converge to early-to-mid adolescence as a key developmental period for developing well-adjusted social behaviors, and especially in the cooperative domain there are pronounced improvements. These studies make an important contribution to the literature on social development and learning, and may eventually contribute to interventions targeted at promoting well-adjusted behavior in typically developing adolescents, as well as youth with maladaptive social tendencies. Show less
Facial expressions play a fundamental role in social interactions, as demonstrated by our spontaneous inclination to mimic emotional expressions of others. In this thesis, I take a broad... Show moreFacial expressions play a fundamental role in social interactions, as demonstrated by our spontaneous inclination to mimic emotional expressions of others. In this thesis, I take a broad perspective and show that people mimic each other on many more levels than previously thought. Special attention is given to autonomic mimicry (synchrony in heart rate, skin conductance and pupil diameter), which is an underexplored area of research. In the first empirical chapter, I show that pupil mimicry activates social brain regions and when the pupils of interacting partners synchronously dilate, trust is promoted. In the subsequent real-life experiment, I demonstrate that synchrony in heart rate and skin conductance boost attraction between people on a date. In the remaining chapters, I manipulate mimicry with optical illusion and brain stimulation to provide evidence that autonomic and facial mimicry are controlled by distinct neurological pathways. Together, these findings implicate that the tendency to automatically mimic and physiologically align with others can result in emotional contagion – the tendency to ‘catch’ another person’s emotion, which in return encourages trust and affiliation. In sum, this research takes a fundamental step towards the understanding of the neurobehavioral pathways through which mimicry influence (pro)social behaviors. Show less
This thesis studies the role of trust in the Catholic Reformation in seventeenth-century Genoa. It explores the way in which many reform-minded Catholics consciously tried to find an answer to the... Show moreThis thesis studies the role of trust in the Catholic Reformation in seventeenth-century Genoa. It explores the way in which many reform-minded Catholics consciously tried to find an answer to the crisis of trust that dominated post-Reformation Europe by means of reforms and new initiatives. In particular, this dissertation examines how the effectiveness of these reforms and initiatives was impacted by practices of trust and distrust, as well as the reformers’ own perception of their strategies. Several features of the Catholic Reformation are analysed: the attempt to reform the secular clergy; new female religious initiatives; the effort to reform female cloistered life; and the establishment of new religious congregations. The trust approach used in this thesis constitutes an antidote to the current Italian paradigm in which the focus on power and discipline tends to obscure the plurality of the Italian Church in the seventeenth century. The concept moreover provides a key to explain several contradictions with which the current historiography confronts us such as the juxtaposition of instances of freedom and compulsion in the realm of female religiosity and the paradoxical coexistence of very ineffective and very successful attempts to reform. Show less
Objectives: Tailoring medical information to cancer patients' needs is recommended, but there is little guidance on how to tailor, and limited research exists about its effects. Tailoring to the... Show moreObjectives: Tailoring medical information to cancer patients' needs is recommended, but there is little guidance on how to tailor, and limited research exists about its effects. Tailoring to the amount of preferred information may be easily implementable in clinic and is tested here.Methods: A video-vignette experiment was used to systematically vary video patients' information preferences (limited/extensive) and amount of provided information (additional/no additional). N= 253 cancer patients/survivors evaluated these video-recorded consultations, serving as analogue patients (APs), and completed outcome measures.Results: Tailoring information to video patients' preferences had no effect on APs' evaluation of the consultation (satisfaction, trust). Yet, there was a main effect of APs' own information preferences: Those preferring extensive information recalled (M Delta = 5.8%) and recognized (M Delta = 3.5%) more information than those preferring limited information. Moreover, information provision mattered among APs who preferred limited information: They recognized even less if provided with extensive information.Conclusions: Tailoring to the amount of video patient's information preferences did not affect APs' evaluation of the consultation (satisfaction, trust), while APs' personal information preferences determined their recall and recognition of medical information.Practice implications: Information preferences should be assessed and tailored to in clinical practice. Overwhelming patients/survivors, who prefer limited information, should be prevented. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Show less
Het is onduidelijk of en in hoeverre de aanslagen in nabijgelegen landen ook van invloed zijn op de risicobeleving van de Nederlandse bevolking Niet alleen aanslagen in buurlanden kunnen van... Show moreHet is onduidelijk of en in hoeverre de aanslagen in nabijgelegen landen ook van invloed zijn op de risicobeleving van de Nederlandse bevolking Niet alleen aanslagen in buurlanden kunnen van invloed zijn op de risicoperceptie in Nederland,1 maar ook het, door de overheid ingeschaalde, dreigingsniveau. De vraag rijst of en in hoeverre het relatief langdurig hoge dreigingsniveau (substantieel, niveau vier van vijf, sinds maart 2013) de risicoperceptie van de Nederlandse bevolking beïnvloedt. Show less
Individuals suffering from depression often have difficulty trusting others. Previous research has shown a relationship between trust formation and pupil mimicry - the synchronization of pupil... Show moreIndividuals suffering from depression often have difficulty trusting others. Previous research has shown a relationship between trust formation and pupil mimicry - the synchronization of pupil sizes between individuals. The current study therefore examined whether pupil mimicry is weaker in depressed individuals and an underlying factor of their low levels of trust. Forty-two patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 40 healthy control subjects played trust games with virtual partners. Images of these partners' eye regions were presented to participants before they had to make a monetary investment decision. Partners' pupils either dilated, constricted, or remained static over the course of 4-s interactions. During the task, participants' pupil sizes were recorded with eye-tracking equipment to assess mimicry. The results confirm that patients with MDD were somewhat less trusting than controls and used another's pupillary cues differently when deciding to trust. Specifically, whereas healthy controls trusted partners with dilating pupils more than partners with constricting pupils, patients with MDD particularly trusted partners whose pupils changed in size less, regardless of whether partners' pupils were dilating or constricting. This difference in investment behavior was unrelated to differences in pupil mimicry, which was equally apparent in both groups and fostered trust to the same extent. Whereas lower levels of trust observed in patients with MDD could not be explained by differences in pupil mimicry, our data show that pupil dilation mimicry might help people to trust. These findings provide further evidence for the important role of pupil size and pupil mimicry in interpersonal trust formation and shed light on the pathophysiology of clinically low trust in patients with MDD. Show less
Verhees, M.W.F.T.; Ceulemans, E.; Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J.; IJzendoorn, M.H. van; De Winter, S.; Bosmans, G. 2017
When do recipients of an apology (“trustors”) base their decision to trust a perpetrator (a “trustee”) on the attributional information embedded in an apology? Attributions provide a detailed... Show moreWhen do recipients of an apology (“trustors”) base their decision to trust a perpetrator (a “trustee”) on the attributional information embedded in an apology? Attributions provide a detailed account of the trustee's causal involvement in committing a transgression. We therefore argue that trustors in a low construal level mindset use this information in their trusting decision. However, trustors in a high construal level mindset likely consider all apologies as simple statements of regret, regardless of the attributional information they contain. We find support for this argument in four laboratory experiments. This research nuances the idea that to restore trust by means of an apology, the trustee must only use an effective attribution for a negative outcome. We also present a more realistic understanding of the process leading from apologies to trust than has been offered in previous work by simultaneously considering the role of the trustor and that of the trustee in the trust restoration process. Show less
PurposeThe original 18-item, four-dimensional Trust in Oncologist Scale assesses cancer patients’ trust in their oncologist. The current aim was to develop and validate a short form version of the... Show morePurposeThe original 18-item, four-dimensional Trust in Oncologist Scale assesses cancer patients’ trust in their oncologist. The current aim was to develop and validate a short form version of the scale to enable more efficient assessment of cancer patients’ trust.MethodsExisting validation data of the full-length Trust in Oncologist Scale were used to create a short form of the Trust in Oncologist Scale. The resulting short form was validated in a new sample of cancer patients (n = 92). Socio-demographics, medical characteristics, trust in the oncologist, satisfaction with communication, trust in healthcare, willingness to recommend the oncologist to others and to contact the oncologist in case of questions were assessed. Internal consistency, reliability, convergent and structural validity were tested.ResultsThe five-item Trust in Oncologist Scale Short Form was created by selecting the statistically best performing item from each dimension of the original scale, to ensure content validity. Mean trust in the oncologist was high in the validation sample (response rate 86%, M = 4.30, SD = 0.98). Exploratory factor analyses supported one-dimensionality of the short form. Internal consistency was high, and temporal stability was moderate. Initial convergent validity was suggested by moderate correlations between trust scores with associated constructs.ConclusionsThe Trust in Oncologist Scale Short Form appears to efficiently, reliably and validly measures cancer patients’ trust in their oncologist. It may be used in research and as a quality indicator in clinical practice. More thorough validation of the scale is recommended to confirm this initial evidence of its validity. Show less
Nieuwe ontwikkelingen in wetenschap en technologie roepen naast positieve ook negatieve reacties en twijfel op. De reacties worden geuit in debatten. Deze debatten verlopen vaak volgens hetzelfde... Show moreNieuwe ontwikkelingen in wetenschap en technologie roepen naast positieve ook negatieve reacties en twijfel op. De reacties worden geuit in debatten. Deze debatten verlopen vaak volgens hetzelfde stramien: er is een nieuwe ontwikkeling, daarover moet een standpunt worden ingenomen, dit roept vragen op, vragen die vaak gaan over wat 'natuurlijk' is, waar onze grenzen liggen, of alles mag wat kan. Over mogelijke antwoorden bestaan ernstige meningsverschillen. Het debat bloedt dood en er wordt een besluit genomen waarbij aan de (potentiële) rijkheid van de debatten wordt voorbijgegaan. Waarom verlopen debatten op deze manier? Waarom worden deelnemers en argumenten zo vaak gestereotypeerd, uitgesloten of onredelijk genoemd? Dat valt eigenlijk pas goed te begrijpen door te kijken naar wat onder de oppervlakte speelt: de manier waarop we met elkaar in gesprek gaan in publieke discussies. De kwaliteit van debatten kan worden verbeterd. Dat kan door ruimte te creëren voor morele democratisering. Dit vereist een driedubbele verbreding van publieke debatten. Een verbreding van deelnemers, van vragen en argumenten. Hiervoor is redelijkheid, inclusiviteit en moed nodig. Show less
Deze dissertatie gaat over antecedenten en consequenties van publiek vertrouwen in organisaties die betrokken zijn bij de ontwikkeling van en de besluitvorming over koolstofdioxide afvang transport... Show moreDeze dissertatie gaat over antecedenten en consequenties van publiek vertrouwen in organisaties die betrokken zijn bij de ontwikkeling van en de besluitvorming over koolstofdioxide afvang transport en opslag (CCS) technologie. Het doel van CCS technologie is het verminderen van de alsmaar toenemende concentratie koolstofdioxide in de atmosfeer, de voornaamste oorzaak van klimaatverandering. Publieke acceptatie van CCS technologie is cruciaal voor het succesvol implementeren van deze technologie. De redenering die in deze dissertatie centraal staat is dat publieke acceptatie zal afhangen van de mate van publiek vertrouwen in organisaties die betrokken zijn bij CCS (zoals industriële organisaties, milieuorganisaties en overheidsorganisaties). Publiek vertrouwen in organisaties blijkt inderdaad publieke acceptatie van CCS te beïnvloeden. Aangezien uit het onderzoek blijkt dat publiek vertrouwen in industriële organisaties te wensen over laat, is het voornamelijk voor deze organisaties van belang om door middel van communicatie naar het publiek het vertrouwen van mensen te vergroten. Communicatie lijkt effectiever wanneer de suggestie van sociale wenselijkheid in communicatie wordt vermeden door naast publiekdienende (milieu)argumenten voor de inzet van CCS geven ook "eerlijk" aan te geven dat organisatiedienende motieven een rol spelen. Overheidsorganisaties wekken vertrouwen door aan te geven dat zowel milieuorganisaties als industriële organisaties bij de besluitvorming over CCS betrokken zijn. Show less
What does it mean to be human in a world of technology? What could be the role of religion in responding to the ecological crisis? Should we be concerned about the modification of food, and even of... Show moreWhat does it mean to be human in a world of technology? What could be the role of religion in responding to the ecological crisis? Should we be concerned about the modification of food, and even of ourselves? Who do we trust to make decisions regarding our common future? What do we use our technology for? These are not questions for experts only. How can the wider public be involved? Do experts and the general public trust each other sufficiently? Or is the public ignorant, in the eyes of the scientists? And are too many engineers narrow minded, according to the general public? The contributors to this timely and necessary volume address expertise, trust and engagement, as we consider our technological condition , religious resources for the ecological crisis , biotechnology , and matters of trust between scientists and the general public. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, including James Miller from Queen's University, Canada and Tony Watling from the University College, London, this book will captivate a range of readers interested in the spirtitual dimension of of our culture and society Show less
=========ABSTRACT=========It is tempting to think of precolonial India as a harmonious society, but was it? This study brings evidence from new and unexpected sources to take position in the... Show more=========ABSTRACT=========It is tempting to think of precolonial India as a harmonious society, but was it? This study brings evidence from new and unexpected sources to take position in the sensitive debate over that question. From the investigation of six conflicts in the Deccan region it draws conclusions about group behaviour that put modern clashes in context. Some of the conflicts under investigation appear odd today but were very real to the involved, as the antagonism between Left and Right Hand castes was for about a thousand years. Other conflicts continue to the present day: the seventeenth century saw lasting changes in the relationship between Hindus and Muslims as well as the rise of patriotism and early nationalism in both India and Europe. This book carefully brings to life the famous and obscure people who made the era, from the Dutch painter Heda to queen Khadija and from maharaja Shivaji to the English rebel Keigwin=========NOTES=========First Leiden University Press edition, 2009. Entirely revised from the author’s dissertation Xenophobia and Consciousness in Seventeenth-Century India: Six Cases from the Deccan, 12-Mar-2008. Show less
Trust research has become vitally important in the study of public administration. Many scholars emphasize the importance of trust for society, because it may improve co-operation. The relation... Show moreTrust research has become vitally important in the study of public administration. Many scholars emphasize the importance of trust for society, because it may improve co-operation. The relation between trust and policy making, however, has not yet been discussed very thoroughly. This is remarkable because the formulation of public policies can both increase and decrease trust. A new policy could satisfy one group of citizens while at the same time antagonizing another group. Policies can give hope, but they might also result in frustration; policies can satisfy expectations, but they can also confirm prior cynicism. In other words, administrators and politicians may both establish and lose trust while formulating and adjusting policies. The aim in this study is to understand how these competing processes play out through the study of the history of agricultural policy making in the Netherlands. Show less
