We make complex decisions every day, requiring trust in many different entities for different reasons. These decisions are not made by combining many isolated trust evaluations. Many interlocking factors play a role, each dynamically impacting the others. In this brief, "trust context" is defined as the system level description of how the trust evaluation process unfolds.

Networks today are part of almost all human activity, supporting and shaping it. Applications increasingly incorporate new interdependencies and new trust contexts. Social networks connect people and organizations...