Trust Methods: Accounting for Who, What, When, and How to Trust

What is trust and how should it be studied? In his talk, Gil Eyal argues against conventional approaches to studying trust in the social sciences and proposes an alternate strategy focused on “trust methods.” Instead of treating trust as a static property that can be measured by close-format survey questions, he conceptualizes trusting as a skillful act that is highly context-dependent and attuned to temporal variables such as speed, duration sequence, and timing. To illustrate this approach, Eyal draws on interviews with long Covid patients focusing on how they account for who, what, when, and how they distinguish responsible trust from blind faith.

Suggested preparatory reading

Larry Au, Cristian Capotescu, Gil Eyal, and Sophie Sharp. 2024. “How People Decide to Trust in Science.” American Scientist 112, 38-45.

Larry Au, Cristian Capotescu, Gil Eyal, and Gabrielle Finestone. 2022. “Long Covid and Medical Gaslighting: Dismissal, Delayed Diagnosis, and Deferred Treatment.” SSM – Qualitative Research in Health, Volume 2, 2022.

Gil Eyal is Professor of Sociology and the director of the Trust Collaboratory at Columbia University. His most recent books are Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democratic Politics (with Thomas Medvetz, OUP, 2023) and The Crisis of Expertise (Polity, 2019).