Differentiating behavioral trust and trustworthiness beliefs to improve science communication practice and research

This review summarizes research on the importance of distinguishing between behavioral trust and trustworthiness beliefs in the context of science communication research and practice. It argues that the scientific community would benefit from discussing and measuring trust-related beliefs and behaviors separately to help foster a more nuanced understanding of how specific groups think about scientists and to help focus communication efforts on areas of weakness. Although the labels used vary, key trustworthiness beliefs addressed by past research often include beliefs about scientists' abilities (i.e., expertise, competence), benevolence (i.e., goodwill, caring), and integrity (i.e., honesty). Science communication researchers are also often interested in openness beliefs. While there is general agreement on key concepts, much of the available work is correlational. The review found only a limited number of experiments focused on providing the scientific community with data on how to demonstrate specific dimensions of trustworthiness and thus argues for additional research.