Can I Trust You? A Critical Review of the Perceptual, Social and Cognitive Influences on Trust

Trust is a complex psychological phenomenon that is foundational to coordinated behaviour and societal function. This narrative review critically examines the perceptual, social, and cognitive indicators of trust, drawing on findings from multiple fields of behavioural science to identify theoretical and empirical gaps in our current understanding. Particular attention is paid to social identity cues, perceptual features like eye gaze, pupil dilation, and facial characteristics, and memory recall factors related to threat and reliability judgements, to highlight the potential domains of functional overlap that are ignored by narrowly focused research approaches. The review also identifies critical gaps in understanding the interplay of multimodal sensory cues, the impact of trust violations on memory encoding and retrieval, and the integration of trust cues in ecologically valid settings. To ground the importance of the dynamics of trust formation, the paper then overviews some demonstrable effects trust has on other domains of decision-making, ranging from financial to legal. Recommendations for future research emphasise the need for interdisciplinary approaches to account for these complexities. Pursuing these empirical directions could lead to significant practical advances in the understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underpinning trust, and their application to real-world decision-making settings where trust is essential.