Cooperation thrives where stakes are low, threats absent, and ambiguity reduced

Evidence

To briefly summarize the content of this section, then, we may propose that in conditions where the long-term interests of the participants are stressed, where only small initial or additional rewards are at stake, where there is no potential for threat and great potential for successful communication in that the ambiguity of the situation is reduced, and where the participants are in free and easy contact, then cooperation and, one might suggest, a certain level of trust can develop. In some respects, the result concerning small initial rewards or small increments, and that concerning the consequences of the absence.of threat, might seem counter-intuitive. If there is so little at stake, why should one bother with all the difficulties associated with trusting someone else, and why should the absence of an ability to penalize a defaulter lead to greater apparent trust? — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 592

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly extends the reader’s trust-framework reading: conditions for trust formation map onto Luhmann’s ‘familiarity’ baseline and Hardin’s observability constraints.
• QUESTION: Why would the absence of threat-penalty capability increase apparent trust? Worth digging into the cognitive-operations answer the author gestures toward.

Related

• Trust develops where rewards are small, threats absent, and communication easy. (similarity 0.93)
• Strategies to minimize reliance on trust have been conflated with neglecting to understand it. (similarity 0.84)
• Trust requires assurance that is at least somewhat well based (similarity 0.83)
• Successful constraint-based cooperation can itself build up trust over time. (similarity 0.83)
• Cooperation depends on trust plus situation-specific constraints and incentives (similarity 0.83)
• Cooperation requires knowing others’ motives and being believed trustworthy (similarity 0.82)
• Cooperative equilibria require conditional trust, not blind trust or blind distrust (similarity 0.82)
• Familiarity and expected future meetings enable cooperative trust (similarity 0.82)
• Cooperation requires trust as assurance against defection by non-dependent parties (similarity 0.81)
• Distrust requires little evidence while trust demands rich understanding of incentives (similarity 0.81)
• Trust requires both freedom to defect and constraints that make cooperation attractive (similarity 0.81)
• Explaining trust requires understanding the conditions of cooperation (similarity 0.81)
• Trust operates where parties are both free and constrained (similarity 0.81)
• Cooperation requires common knowledge of mutual preferences, not just shared preferences (similarity 0.81)
• Distrust needs less information than trust to form. (similarity 0.81)