Lewicki and Bunker trust development model

Roy Lewicki and Barbara Bunker’s trust development model establishes the foundational account of how interpersonal trust progresses. Their model identifies three developmental stages with distinct properties and distinct requirements. Calculus-based trust is the earliest form: the person calculates whether the benefits of being trusted and the costs of betrayal make trustworthy behaviour rational for the other person, and extends trust to the degree that the calculation is favourable. Knowledge-based trust develops as the accumulated history of interaction provides enough reliable behavioural data to predict the other person’s responses across a range of situations; at this stage trust is grounded in familiarity rather than calculation. Identification-based trust is the most developed form: the person has internalised enough of the other’s values, goals, and perspective that they trust the other to act in their interests even in their absence, because the alignment of values means that the other’s interests and their own are genuinely shared.

The developmental sequence has a specific implication for trust-building design: the movement from one stage to the next requires the accumulation of consistent behavioural evidence across enough varied situations to confirm the trust estimate that each stage provides. The grand gesture, the single dramatic demonstration of trustworthiness, contributes one data point to a pattern that requires many. The off-site that produces a peak experience of shared vulnerability and mutual disclosure contributes to the knowledge-based trust stage, but it cannot substitute for the accumulated daily interaction record that the knowledge stage requires because the peak experience is a single context, and the knowledge stage requires prediction across multiple contexts. The team that bonded at the off-site and returned to a working environment in which small bids for connection are turned away and small commitments are unreliably kept will find that the off-site trust decays at the rate the daily interaction pattern dictates.

John Gottman’s bids-for-connection research

John Gottman and Nan Silver’s bids-for-connection research predicts the specific micro-level mechanism through which the trust pattern is established. A bid for connection is any small action that invites engagement from another person: the comment that wants a response, the question that expects an answer, the expression of difficulty that could be acknowledged. The research documents three possible responses: turning toward the bid with genuine engagement, turning away from it with distraction or non-response, and turning against it with dismissal or irritation. The accumulated ratio of turns toward to turns away or against is the trust input that the interaction pattern provides.

The bid-response research predicts the specific mechanism through which trust is built in the daily working environment. The team member who asks a question and receives genuine engagement has turned toward the bid. The team member who shares a concern and receives a distracted acknowledgement has had their bid turned away. The pattern accumulates regardless of whether either party is consciously tracking it, and the pattern is the trust signal that the Lewicki developmental model requires to move from calculus-based to knowledge-based trust. The grand gesture cannot undo the pattern that the accumulated bid record has established. The team member who has experienced months of turned-away bids has accumulated the knowledge-stage evidence that the knowledge stage requires: reliable prediction of how their bids will be received, and the prediction is not favourable.

Mayer, Davis and Schoorman’s three antecedents

Roger Mayer, James Davis and F. David Schoorman’s trust model established the three antecedent dimensions that interpersonal trust requires. Ability concerns whether the trustee has the capacity to do what the trust relationship requires; the person extends trust to the degree that they have evidence for the other’s relevant competence. Benevolence concerns whether the trustee genuinely cares about the trustor’s outcomes; the person extends trust to the degree that the other’s concern for their interests is evident beyond the self-interested component of their relationship. Integrity concerns whether the trustee adheres to acceptable principles; the person extends trust to the degree that the other’s behaviour is consistent with stated values and commitments.

The three-antecedent model has a specific implication for the small-moment trust formation mechanism: the trust pattern requires consistent evidence in all three dimensions, and the absence of evidence in any one prevents the full development regardless of the strength of evidence in the others. The team member who has abundant evidence of a colleague’s ability and integrity but limited evidence of genuine benevolence, of the colleague’s care for their outcomes beyond the professionally required minimum, will not develop the identification-based trust that the ability and integrity evidence alone cannot provide. The benevolence dimension is the one most reliably built through small moments rather than professional performance: the small acknowledgements, the genuine curiosities, and the voluntary attentions that signal care beyond obligation are the benevolence evidence that small moments provide and grand gestures cannot manufacture.

You might also like
The grief nobody tells you comes with building a business
Entrepreneurship can make or break you.
What leaders can actually control about culture and the significant amount they cannot
The leader is the primary architect of organisational culture — and simultaneously operates within a social system with its own momentum that resists individual direction. Both of these things are true, and the failure to hold them simultaneously produces either the overreach that burns leaders out or the abdication that allows dysfunction to compound.
Why loneliness is self-perpetuating and what the psychology of social withdrawal actually looks like
The advice most commonly offered to lonely founders is social: attend more events, join communities, put yourself out there. The implicit model is that loneliness is a supply problem — insufficient social contact — and that increasing the supply will address it. Cacioppo’s research suggests a different and more difficult picture. Loneliness is not merely a supply problem. It is a system that has developed self-perpetuating properties, through predictable psychological mechanisms that make the connection that would resolve the loneliness progressively harder to achieve as the loneliness continues. Understanding those mechanisms is the prerequisite for interrupting them.
Why some cultures produce more entrepreneurs per capita and what the psychological research suggests about the causes
Entrepreneurship rates vary significantly across countries even when controlling for economic conditions and legal environments. The United States produces more venture-backed startups per capita than France; Israel produces more technology companies per capita than Japan; the Scandinavian countries produce high rates of small business formation despite high tax environments. The variation cannot be explained by economics alone. What the cross-cultural psychology research suggests is that the relevant variables are psychological — specific cultural values, uncertainty tolerances, and attitudes toward failure that are transmitted through upbringing, education, and social environment, and that determine whether entrepreneurship feels like a viable and desirable path for the people who are capable of it.

The vulnerability mechanism

Brené Brown’s vulnerability research predicts the specific trust formation accelerant that behavioural reliability alone cannot provide. The genuine disclosure of limitation, uncertainty, or difficulty signals trust to the people it is disclosed to and generates reciprocal trust from them. The team member who shares their uncertainty about a decision is simultaneously demonstrating existing trust in the people they share with and providing the relationship evidence that genuine benevolence requires: they have made themselves vulnerable to judgement, and the willingness to do so is the most direct available signal that the relationship is genuinely valued.

The vulnerability mechanism predicts a specific pattern in trust formation across team contexts: the team in which no one ever discloses uncertainty, limitation, or difficulty is not a high-trust team performing confidently. It is a team in which the trust has not developed to the level that genuine disclosure requires. The absence of vulnerability is the evidence of trust’s absence, not its presence, because vulnerability is both the accelerant of trust formation and the evidence that trust has reached the level at which vulnerability is safe. The team in which vulnerability is present is the team in which the trust formation process is actively operating.

John Rempel and John Holmes on adversity-based trust

John Rempel and John Holmes’s trust research documented the specific quality of evidence that produces the most durable trust. The trust that forms from the other person’s reliable, appropriate behaviour in unforeseen, ambiguous, and difficult circumstances, when the behaviour was least observable and most costly, is more durable than the trust that forms from reliable performance under normal conditions. The colleague who keeps a commitment when it is inconvenient, who acknowledges a mistake when it would be easier to minimise it, and who supports a team member in a difficult moment when no one is watching is contributing trust evidence of a qualitatively different kind from the colleague who reliably delivers in normal circumstances.

The adversity finding predicts a specific and practically applicable trust formation asymmetry: the moments that most powerfully move the trust pattern are the moments of difficulty, ambiguity, and cost. The small moment in which the founder acknowledges their own error in front of the team, responds to a team member’s difficulty with genuine attention rather than a management response, or keeps a commitment at personal cost when breaking it would be easy and unobserved contributes more to the trust pattern than many ordinary positive interactions combined. The grand gesture is not the trust-building event. The small moment of genuine behaviour when the cost was real and the reward was uncertain is.

The new hire trust formation window

Research on trust formation in new team members documents the specific period in which the trust pattern is most powerfully established: the early weeks of the relationship, when the new team member is most attentive to the bid-response pattern and when the knowledge-stage evidence is being gathered from the most limited available sample. The interaction pattern of the first weeks disproportionately shapes the trust trajectory that follows, because the early evidence forms the prior from which all subsequent evidence is interpreted. The new hire who experiences genuine acknowledgement, curiosity, and care in the first weeks has a positive prior from which subsequent interactions are read. The new hire who experiences turned-away bids and low benevolence signals in the first weeks has a negative prior that subsequent positive interactions must overcome rather than simply add to.

If the experiences described in this article are significantly affecting your wellbeing, speaking with a psychologist is the right next step. UK: Samaritans (116 123, free, 24/7). Mind (0300 123 3393). BACP: bacp.co.uk/search/Therapists. Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741 (US, UK, Canada, Ireland). International: internationaltherapistdirectory.com.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. Sources: Lewicki, R.J. and Bunker, B.B. (1996). Developing and maintaining trust in work relationships. In R.M. Kramer and T.R. Tyler (eds.), Trust in Organizations. Sage. Gottman, J.M. and Silver, N. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Crown. Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H. and Schoorman, F.D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709-734. Coyle, D. (2018). The Culture Code. Bantam Books. Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection. Hazelden. Rempel, J.K. and Holmes, J.G. (1986). How do I trust thee? Psychology Today, 20(2), 28-34. Covey, S.M.R. (2006). The Speed of Trust. Free Press. Solomon, R.C. and Flores, F. (2001). Building Trust in Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life. Oxford University Press.