Abstract
Two kinds of trust-general truat and particularistic trust-are theoretically distinguished. An experiment simulating buyer-seller relations successfully tested the following hypotheses concerning the effects of social uncertainty and subjects'general trust upon (a) commitment formation between a particular buyer and a seller and (b) the buyer's particularitsic trust in the seller. First, social uncertainty promoted commitment formation. Second, commitment formation promoted one partner's trust n the other (which we called particularistic trust). Third, as a result of the above two effects, social uncertainty promoted the general level of particularistic trust in a group. Fourth, general trust, which was defined as a general belief in human benevolence, suppressed commitment formation. However, the fifth hypothesis based on the second and the fourth hypotheses was not supported. That is, general trust did not suppress particularistic trust.
