Toward a Model of Interpersonal Trust Drawn from Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics.

Trust pervades nearly every social aspect of our daily lives, and its disruption is a significant factor in mental illness. Research in the field of neuroeconomics has gained a deeper understanding of the neuropsychoeconomic (NPE) underpinnings of trust by combining complementary methodologies from neuroscience, psychology, and economics. However, a coherent model of trust that integrates separate findings under a conceptual framework is still lacking. Here, we sketch out an integrative NPE model that explains how the interactions of psychoeconomic components engage domain-general large-scale brain networks in shaping trust behavior over time. We also point out caveats of current research approaches and outline open questions that can help guide future transdisciplinary investigations for a better understanding of the neuropsychology of trust. Highlights Human societies are unique in the level to which interpersonal trust penetrates every facet of our private and public social lives. Theoretical and empirical work has made tremendous strides over the last decade in investigating the neuropsychology of interpersonal trust, but a conceptual framework integrating separate research findings into a neuropsychological model of trust is still lacking. A neuropsychoeconomic framework – combining complementary methodologies from the fields of economics, psychology, and neuroscience – can help to assimilate findings across behavioral, psychological, and neural levels. An integrative model of interpersonal trust is proposed that explains how the interactions of psychoeconomic components engage domain-general large-scale brain networks in shaping trust behavior over time. As the transdisciplinary trust research matures, the proposed framework and model might help to guide future investigations to overcome current research limitations toward a better understanding of the neuropsychological underpinnings of trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]