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April 3, 2024
Communicating Trustworthiness and Fostering Trust
By John C. Besley, Ph.D., Ellis N. Brandt Professor, Michigan State University*
Trust in people, organizations, and groups forms the basis for many of our daily actions. We trust pilots when we travel on the planes they fly, doctors when we take the pills they prescribe, and agriculture companies when we eat the food they sell.
Unfortunately, health communicators can’t simply expect trust from their audiences. But complaining about possible losses in reported confidence will not build trust. What health communicators can do is provide real reasons for why a person should see scientists, doctors, and research entities as trustworthy in specific contexts.
How can communicators convey why scientists or claims should be considered trustworthy? Researchers have spent a great deal of effort parsing the dimensions of trustworthiness beliefs. This work can help communicators decide what to try to communicate to help build trust.
One of the most common models of trust from organizational psychology distinguishes between beliefs about:
- ability (i.e., expertise),
- benevolence (i.e., goodwill, caring, pro-social motives), and
- integrity (i.e., honesty, morality, authenticity).
This type of model provides a framework for research that suggests people generally see scientists as having substantial expertise but are less sure about scientists’ motives and integrity. This means health communicators likely need to focus on figuring out how to communicate the benevolence and integrity of the scientists they feature.
While different scholars use different terminology (e.g., warmth and competence), a common element of various trust models is distinguishing between trustworthiness beliefs (i.e., perceptions) and behavioral trust (i.e., acting on trust by getting on a plane or taking a pill). The expectation is that communicating meaningful trustworthiness information can help foster trustworthiness beliefs and that, over time, these trustworthiness beliefs can help foster behavioral trust.
A key here is remembering that communication isn’t just about message design. There are myriad aspects of communication. We communicate through how we behave, what we say, the tone and style, who communicates, when the communication occurs, and the mode of communication.
In planning, we have found that communicators can build behavioral trust by asking specific questions keeping these principles in mind. For example, ask “how could we communicate our eagerness to listen?” rather than vague questions like “how can we build trust?”
Paying attention to these trustworthiness dimensions can also help with ongoing evaluation. Too few organizations collect regular, actionable information about how key audiences perceive them. For example, finding out if a priority group sees a scientist as skilled, caring, and honest will tell you more than simply asking that group whether they trust them. Communicators can then use data about these types of perceptions to help them develop strategies for more effective communication.
It is easy to talk abstractly about trust, but communicators must think about trust in more nuanced ways. They need to ask how intended audiences perceive the research they cover. This will give them insights into how to do the hard work of behaving and communicating in ways that earn trustworthiness. Only by doing this can we build the capacity to persuade people to behave in more evidence-based and intentional ways.
*Besley is co-author of Strategic Science Communication (JHUP 2022).