Abstract: This research is aimed at exploring cross-culturally target-specific interpersonal trust and its cognitive processes. Trust was defined in the studyas one's behavioral intention to commit his or her own resources to a targetperson without any immediate reciprocation in order to get what he or sheneeds. It was measured by the Interpersonal Trusting Behavior Scale (ITBS)among subjects from mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States.20specified target persons, such as Father, Mother, Boy/Girl Friend, Class-mate,Colleague,and Stranger were included as targets of various trusting be-haviors in the study, and these 20 persons were classified in terms of theirITBS scores into three categories: Intimates, Acquaintances and Strangers,by the method of cluster analysis. The three groups of subjects did not differ in their trust toward the in-timate targets, but the mainland Chinese gave more trust toward their acq-uaintances and strangers than did either Hong Kong or American subjects(ps<.05), while the atter two showed no difference between each other.It seems that the variable of industrialization rather than culture has a moresignificant influence on one's level of interpersonal trust. A cognitive model of trust was developed by using multiple regressionbetween the likelihood of trusting behavior and six relevant predictor varia-bles: one's expectancy for positive rewards and negative outcomes,one's eva-luation of the positive and negative outcomes,trustworthiness of a target pers-on, and one's control over the target person. Of these variables two werefound to have most predictive contributions to trust behaviors, regardless ofculture: 1) one's expectancy for outcomes and 2) one's estimation of nega-tive outcomes in enacting trusting behavior toward a specific target person.

Key words: interpersonal trust, target-specific person, cross-cultural research, cognitive model