Social Sciences - Trust vs. Confidence

[Cikomyr]

Hi there. I am currently writing a paper regarding the nature of capitalism (you may remember me asking about "point of failure" earlier). And my professor recommended that I addressed the nature of Trust vs. Confidence.

Now, I was befuddled at first; I believed these two terms were synonymous. But I was wrong. I just want to check with this respected Board if I am right on the money, or if I need to review a bit my litterature.

If you have some academic papers that you could direct me so I could use as a reference, that would be awesome. I plan to do my research about that term later, so I just decided to fish a bit on the board :smallbiggrin:


Okay. So, "Trust" is the most broad term that measures the sentiment you are willing to.. well, trust someone. It is a measure by which you feel you can rely on something, someone. It can be rationale, irrational, etc...

"Confidence", on the other hand, is backed-up trust. It's trust you are capable of pointing out the reasons of you sentiment.


ex: My sister has proven to be very responsible in the past. She always gave me back what I lent her, and she rarely do stupid mistake. If I trust her, it's because I am confident.

My sister is fickle and she loses things. She once bought drugs on her rent's money. I may still trust her, but it's an irrational feeling; it's not confidence.


So all confidence is trust, not all trust is confidence.

Is that it?

[Ebon_Drake]

Confidence seems like a more flexible concept to me, if you have enough confidence in someone/thing then you would consider placing your trust in them. The former establishes the latter.

To use your second example, you might have enough confidence to trust your fickle sister with a £10 loan, but not enough for a £1,000 loan. You might have enough confidence in her to look after your house for a week, but not your children.

This isn't really based on anything other than my own thoughts though. I had a quick look at the dictionary definitions and they essentially used the two terms to define each other:


Trust
noun
1.
reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
2.
confident expectation of something; hope.
3.
confidence in the certainty of future payment for property or goods received; credit: to sell merchandise on trust.
4.
a person on whom or thing on which one relies: God is my trust.
5.
the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.

Confidence
noun
1.
full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing: We have every confidence in their ability to succeed.
2.
belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance: His lack of confidence defeated him.
3.
certitude; assurance: He described the situation with such confidence that the audience believed him completely.
4.
a confidential communication: to exchange confidences.
5.
(especially in European politics) the wish to retain an incumbent government in office, as shown by a vote in a particular issue: a vote of confidence.

[BWR]

In social sciences?
Can't help you except recommend that you find something along the lines of "Dictionary of Sociology" and see what it has to say about these terms.
At least that worked when I took phiolosophy and psychology.

If these two terms don't have any specific, well-defined meaning in the social sciences you study, then this is a linguistic/philological question, which seems a bit odd for your assignment.

In any case, look them up in the Oxford English Dictionary. If that cannot help you, nothing can.
Slightly newer, slightly different approaches can be found in the Collins Cobuild dictionary.

Just asking a bunch of forumers about what they think the two terms mean is asking for trouble.

[Savannah]

ex: My sister has proven to be very responsible in the past. She always gave me back what I lent her, and she rarely do stupid mistake. If I trust her, it's because I am confident.

My sister is fickle and she loses things. She once bought drugs on her rent's money. I may still trust her, but it's an irrational feeling; it's not confidence.

So all confidence is trust, not all trust is confidence.

I'm confident that if I loan a drug dealer $100, he can earn enough money from my loan to pay me back with interest. However, I do not trust him to do so.

So, no, you can have confidence without trust.

I agree with BWR, a sociological or psychological dictionary may be helpful. Failing that, I would go to a regular dictionary over the opinions of a forum :smallwink:

[Aedilred]

While there are a lot of minor differences in the way I use the two, I think one of the key ones is that trust implies a degree not just of good faith but of human input and interaction. I don't tend to use "trust" to refer to any confidence I have that automated processes will run, that scientific theories are correct, or that a plan will work. If I do, it tends to be because I'm anthropomorphising the item in question anyway (particularly, say, a car or computer).

When it comes to people, I tend to think that confidence carries a slight conotation of aptitude, whereas trust goes more to integrity.

However, often the two can be used as synonyms. There's no functional difference between "I have absolute confidence in him" and "I have complete trust in him". There are some idioms where "confidence" isn't appropriate, though. For instance, I'd send back a letter with "I trust this satisfies you" but would never sign off with "I have confidence this satisfies you".

Again, it comes back to "good faith" and human input, I think. Trust seems to me to suggest that you're placing the outcome in the hands of another and relying on them to deliver it as far as is within their capabilities, whereas confidence suggests that you've calculated the odds and consider the specified outcome to be the most likely.

[Finlam]

Trust occurs only then there is diffuse power, otherwise there is no need for trust; there also must be an interaction of either passive or active nature, otherwise trust cannot exist as one entity would be unknown to the other. Those are the conditions for trust. Trust, however, is a dependence on something or someone to do or not do something. This means that trust (when excercised) implies consequences for at least one of the parties involved. For example, I trust my friends to not put a knife in my back when I turn around (it would be bad for me if they did). I somewhat trust my mechanic to tell me if something is critically wrong with my car (it would be bad for me if he didn't). I trust PayPal to keep my bank information secure. I trust Twitter so much that I believe putting every thought that runs through my head on the internet forever could never be used against me or in any way come back to haunt me.

Needless to say, trust does not need to have a logical basis and is often based on emotion. Then again, so is confidence.

Confidence is nothing more that a measure of probability. Trust and confidence often overlap because trust comes from and is manifested in interactions between entities that usually maintain expectations of each other's performance (confidence).

In the case of an impersonal interaction (which is often passive), trust can be formed from confidence. An example of where trust and confidence converge: I am very confident that the state government of Iowa contracts out highway maintenance work to contractor companies that are at least semi-competent. If I do not drive through Iowa, there is no relation of trust between me and the Iowa state government or its highway contractors (we have had no direct or indirect interaction), there is only a measure of confidence that the roads are driveable. Now, if I decide to drive through Iowa at night, then that confidence becomes a basis for determining how much I trust the dimly lit roads to be safe and not damage my car; trust now exists because of the passive, indirect interaction.

Perhaps a better example: I am driving and I hand my phone to my friend to navigate. I have confidence that my friend can use the navigation app on my phone and successfully help us arrive at our destination. I have trust in my friend that he won't, intentionally or otherwise, screw up my phone or navigation settings. Finally, if I am confident that we both want to arrive at the destination on time, then I trust my friend to navigate, otherwise I may ask another friend to navigate even if he is less competent (I would have more trust but less confidence).

Generally, trust is and should be valued higher than confidence. I should note that trust will usually influence confidence to a great degree so that it may be logical to form trust by taking this route:
analysis -> confidence -> trust (repeat)
the cycle most often looks like this:
emotions -> trust -> confidence

I could write much and more on this, but I think that's enough for the moment.