Apparent trust differences are often just differential risk-taking and learning speed

Evidence

Again, however, note that variant levels of seeming trust might simply be variant degrees of risk taking or of learning about others. Some people may be much more ready to take risks, even given similar assessments of the likely reliability of their potential partners, than others. They will therefore tend to discover more quickly who is and who is not trustworthy in various contexts, and they may even provide a collective benefit in the form of information on others. A modest risk taker who has enough successes may even feel free to take more substantial risks and might benefit enormously if the world turns out to be relatively benign. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 633

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that survey-measured ‘generalized trust’ may be confounded with risk disposition rather than being a stable trait.
• XREF: Echoes the caveat from chapter 5 about trust being situation-specific; also connects to Milgrom/experimental work on risk tolerance confounding cooperation measures.