Integrating focal vulnerability into trust research

Trust – most often defined as the trustor’s willingness to accept vulnerability – matters across almost every facet of modern life. Significant bodies of research have been devoted to understanding the nature and dynamics of the construct, but much less work has directly considered the vulnerability at the core of its definition. The current article addresses this gap, elucidating the concept of focal vulnerability as the portion of the trustor’s individualised, total potential for experiencing harm that is perceived, relational, and contemporaneous with their assessment of trust. We then position this concept as the vulnerability that a trustor is, by definition, willing to accept. Following work in other literatures, we consider the dynamics of focal vulnerability by exploring the systematic ways in which it is likely to vary. We then argue that this variability can be meaningfully captured by assessing the extent to which the trustor experiences felt vulnerability, an aversive recognition of their potential for experiencing harm. We conclude by exploring the implications of this argument and outline several untested assumptions that are ripe for future research.