在现代性背景下，吉登斯提出关于专家系统与信任的理论。专家系统指代某种宣称具有合法性、专业性的共同体，个体对它的信任在现代社会中发挥着重要的作用。本研究试图探讨专家系统的代理人的能力和善意两种特征对于系统外的某一个体是否信任该系统产生的影响。本研究的逻辑链一部分基于被信任者的个人特征会影响个体对他的人际信任水平，另一部分则基于个体对专家的人际信任水平应当影响个体的系统信任水平。本研究通过两个实验对上述假设进行了验证，实验1发现具有受信任特征的代理人所代表的系统更易得到个体的信任，实验2则发现具有善意特征的代理人更易得到个体的人际信任，能力特征则没有产生影响，而善意与能力二者之间存在交互作用。综合来看，研究者认为代理人特征会对系统信任产生较小但确实存在的影响，这一影响的机制并非是代理人特征首先影响人际信任、随后再影响系统信任，相反个体会将代理人的特征归属于系统，再结合具体情境判断具有该特征的系统是否值得信任。

In the context of modernity, Giddens put forward the theory of abstract systems. Expert systems, one kind of abstract systems, means a community that claims to be legit and professional, and our trust in it plays an important role in modern society. This study attempts to find the influence of agent’s ability and goodwill on whether an individual trust the system. A part of the logical chain of this study is that the agent’s trait will affect our trust in him, and the other part is that the level of interpersonal trust will affect the level of system trust. In this study, two experiments were designed to verify the hypothesis. Experiment 1 found that the system represented by the agent with high qualities is more likely to be trusted, and experiment 2 found that the agent who is kind is more likely to be trusted, while ability trait has no such effect, and there is an interaction between the two traits. On the whole, we believe that the agent’s trait will influence the system trust, which is small but real. The mechanism of the influence isn’t that the traits will affect individual trust first and system trust after that, but people will attribute the traits to the system and then decide to trust the system or not.