Impersonal trust emerges where principals lose direct power to regulate agents.

Evidence

Impersonal trust arises when social-control measures derived from social ties and direct contact between principal and agent are unavailable, when faceless and readily interchangeable individual or organizational agents exercise considerable delegated power and privilege on behalf of principals who can neither specify, scrutinize, evaluate, nor constrain their performance. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 51

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shapiro’s core operational definition of impersonal trust — the constructive starting point for her whole theory.
• XREF: connects to: Trust is structurally vulnerable because agents can exploit principals’ ignorance and distance. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 35; Impersonal trust persists despite agency tensions and varies greatly across conditions. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 146; Trust is structurally precarious because agents control symbolic wealth at a distance from principals. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 35 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Impersonal trust emerges where face-to-face control mechanisms are unavailable #corroborates (0.90)
• Loss of positional power can void the sanction backing a trust relationship #expands (0.85)
• Collective agency shifts trust from persons to future-dated impersonal systems #expands (0.85) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 29
• Power holders can deliberately manufacture distrust conditions to secure control #complicates (0.80)
• Institutions substitute for trust by securing trustworthiness coercively. #corroborates (0.80)
• Mechanisms for controlling impersonal trust themselves create new opportunities for abuse #expands (0.80) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 1
• Organizations require the truster to retain a modicum of distrust #qualifies (0.80)
• Trust is an irreducible tradeoff between over- and under-constraining agents. #expands (0.80)
• Overburdened superiors must confer unarticulated personal trust that underlings exploit for influence #exemplifies (0.75)
• Fraudsters exploit trust in overseers by forging faux regulators #exemplifies (0.75) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 125
• Dominant powers benefit from engineering their subjects’ inability to trust #complicates (0.75)
• Well-established institutions make trust unobtrusive; unsettled ones demand urgent trust #exemplifies (0.75)