How Trusting Are You?
Trust is built in three stages, and most people are stuck at one of them
The best-known model of trust in close relationships describes it as something that arrives in a sequence. First you learn that someone is predictable - you know what they will do. Then that they are dependable - the pattern comes from who they are, so it holds in situations you have not tested. And last, faith: the confidence that they will be there in circumstances neither of you has faced yet, which no amount of evidence can ever actually establish. The third one is a leap, and that is not a weakness in the model. It is the finding.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about the person you are closest to - a partner, or the friend or family member you would call first. The same person throughout.
What it measures
The three dimensions identified in the original Trust Scale. Predictability is built from repetition and answers the question of what they will do. Dependability is built from character and answers what kind of person they are. Faith is built from neither and answers what will happen next, which nothing can answer.
Based on: Trust in close relationships (Rempel, Holmes & Zanna, 1985)
Possible results
Predictability
Knowing what they will do, from having seen it before.
Dependability
Believing the pattern comes from who they are.
Faith
Confidence about situations neither of you has faced.
Common questions
Can trust be rebuilt after it breaks?
The three layers help explain why it is so slow. What usually breaks is the second one - the belief about character - while predictability often survives untouched, which is why everything can look normal and feel impossible at the same time. Rebuilding runs in the original order: consistent behaviour first, for long enough to be boring, then a revised judgement about who they are, and faith last and only if the second one genuinely returns. Trying to skip to the third is the most common way it fails.
Is it safer to trust less?
It is safer in one narrow sense and expensive in a broader one. Withholding the third layer does protect you from a specific kind of shock. It also caps how close the relationship can get, because the other person can feel the reservation and tends to match it, and because a relationship in which nobody is exposed cannot produce the thing people want from relationships. The research consistently finds trust associated with satisfaction, and no study has ever found a way to get the satisfaction without the exposure.
Is low trust a sign of my past or of this person?
The test cannot tell you, but one question usually can: has this shape appeared in every close relationship you have had, or only in this one? A pattern that repeats across people who have little in common is about the pattern. A drop that happened here and only here is information about here, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than explained away as your own difficulty - which is the more common mistake of the two among people thoughtful enough to take a test about it.
Sources
- Rempel, J. K., Holmes, J. G., & Zanna, M. P. (1985). Trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Larzelere, R. E., & Huston, T. L. (1980). The Dyadic Trust Scale: Toward understanding interpersonal trust in close relationships. Journal of Marriage and the Family.
An honest note This is a short adaptation of the Trust Scale, not the scale itself, and it measures your trust in one person rather than some general capacity to trust. That distinction matters: a low result here may be an accurate reading of this particular relationship rather than anything about you, and the only way to tell the two apart is whether the same pattern has appeared with everybody. Two further limits. The three-stage structure held up in the original survey of established couples and has been influential since, but it describes a typical sequence rather than a law - trust does not always build in that order, and it can be rebuilt out of order too. And the whole thing is self-report about someone who is not in the room: it captures how much you trust them, not whether you are right to.