Forced mutual dependence can generate instant trust without personal knowledge

Evidence

In certain richer contexts, trust as encapsulated interest can develop almost instantly. Consider an intense work group put together for a momentary task in which all must perform or all are worse off. For example, the cockpit crew of an aircraft in flight or the members of a military unit in combat might depend on the adequate performance of each person if they are to have best prospects of survival. Just because their interaction is in this forced form, they actually have reason to expect all others to want to live up to the requirements of their own parts in the enterprise. Each therefore at least partially encapsulates the interests of the others. We may call this swift trust (Meyerson, Weick, and Kramer 1996). In contexts of such trust, the relationships are largely depersonalized and are focused on rolerelated competence (the competence is often well certified for each of the group members, as, for example, by the airline employer in the case of a commercial flight crew). In such contexts, too much personal knowledge and individuating data might even be counterproductive. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 394

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘swift trust’ as trust arising from forced role interdependence rather than accumulated personal knowledge.
• XREF: Critical counterpoint to the reader’s blindness-premise: swift trust forms precisely where observability of role performance (certified competence) substitutes for personal trust-related monitoring — the opposite mechanism to Saramago’s sighted-wife scaffold.