Infant trust develops from relationship quality, not provision, and underlies adult trusting capacity.

Evidence

A behavioral learning account, such as that of Erik Erikson, supplies an essential part of an economic or rational account of trust. It is about how particular expectations develop from experience. Such expectations are, of course, central to the rational account. “The firm establishment of enduring patterns for the solution of the nuclear conflict of basic trust versus basic mistrust in mere existence,” notes Erikson (1963, 249), “is the first task of the ego, and thus first of all a task of maternal care.” What is needed is not simply quantities of food and so forth but the quality of the maternal relationship. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 616

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the developmental-psychological layer that Hardin grafts onto the rational account: trust expectations are learned, not innate.
• XREF: Connects to Erikson’s trust-versus-mistrust stage and to Bowlby’s attachment theory; parallels the developmental framing in the reader’s knowledge base.