Fear of not being trusted can itself trigger defection in cooperation games

Evidence

Consider, for instance, the well-known case of the Prisoner’s. Dilemma and related games: the mere expectation that the second player might choose to defect can lead the first player to do so, if only in self-defence. The first player’s anticipation of the second’s defection may be based simply on the belief that the second player is unconditionally uncooperative. But, more tragically, it may also be based on the fear that the second player will not trust him to cooperate, and will defect as a direct result of this lack of trust. Thus (the outcome converges on a sub-optimal equilibrium, even if both players might have been conditionally predisposed to cooperate (cf. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2694

Categorization

• XREF: This anticipation-of-distrust mechanism parallels how Saramago’s sighted doctor’s wife must convey trustworthiness to blinded strangers, and Luhmann’s ‘familiarity’ precondition for trust.
• DEEPTHINKING: The point that one defects not from egoism but from anticipating the other’s distrust — mirror-image trust — is a genuinely subtle mechanism.