Confidence and trust can decline together in a spiraling deterioration

Evidence

Moreover, we have to acknowledge that the relation between confidence and trust is not a simple zero-sum game in which the more confidence is given the less trust is required and vice versa. Such a theory would neglect the structural complexity of social systems as an intervening variable. But a social evolution which achieves increasingly complex societies may in fact generate systems which require more confidence as a prerequisite of participation and more trust as a condition of the best utilization of chances and opportunities. Confidence in the system and trust in partners are different attitudes with respect to alternatives, but they may influence each other; and in particular, a decline in confidence or an increasing difficulty in finding situations and partners which warrant trust may unleash deteriorating effects which diminish the range of activities available to the system. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1387

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s Saramago analysis: sight loss collapses both confidence (system prerequisites) and trust (partner-specific), producing exactly this spiraling deterioration into Hobbesian predation.
• ADDENDUM: Supports argument in the Sacrifice piece: stratified societies stabilize because system-confidence and partner-trust jointly decline is what destabilizes them.

Related

• Confidence and trust are not substitutable but mutually reinforcing social attitudes (similarity 0.91)
• Withdrawing trust shrinks systems below the threshold for self-reproduction. (similarity 0.85)
• Withholding trust feeds a self-reinforcing spiral of lost rational capacity. (similarity 0.83)
• Trust’s interconnected structure makes it fragile across whole systems (similarity 0.82)
• Strategies to minimize reliance on trust have been conflated with neglecting to understand it. (similarity 0.81)
• Trust can be systematically dissolved while a society is preserved (similarity 0.81)
• Trust structures may later givver way to simple confidence (similarity 0.81)
• Missing confidence saps diffuse sentiment while missing trust blocks decisive action. (similarity 0.81)
• Confidence converts to trust when exit or influence becomes available. (similarity 0.80)
• Confidence is a self-fulfilling virtuous spiral unlike superstitious hope (similarity 0.79)
• Social institutions emerge to substitute for trust relationships that cannot work (similarity 0.79)
• Lack of confidence breeds alienation while lack of trust changes risk decisions (similarity 0.79)
• Trust sits between faith and confidence on an evidence-affect continuum (similarity 0.79)
• Trust dies whenever participants lack full information, regardless of religion’s form. (similarity 0.79)
• Confidence can degrade into hope when it no longer tracks one’s own actions (similarity 0.79)