Experience-based trust in trifling risks does not scale up to high-stakes trust

Evidence

One must not infer that during the learning process trust can grow steadily and expand uninterruptedly into more important and consequential matters. To that extent experimental research in social psychology, which is concerned solely with minimal and trifling risks, affords a misleading basis for generalization. Changes in what is at stake and shifts in the balance between anticipated advantage and possible loss build into the learning process thresholds which make for qualitative differences – for instance, when the person who trusts is risking not only himself but also others, his family, his work, or his country. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 204

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what exactly constitutes the ‘threshold’ that makes high-stakes trust qualitatively different from low-stakes trust?
• XREF: connects to: Micro-foundational safety does not guarantee systemic safety — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 131