Instrumental friendliness cannot generate genuine trust

Evidence

It would be difficult to explain how trust could be present as often as it is in subcontracting if it were to depend on sentiments of friendship. If this were true, we would have to adopt in the economic sphere Hawthorn’s (this volume) conclusion in the political: that any attempt to produce trust which was not in fact an attempt to produce something else, something self-reinforcing, must fail. It seems implausible to entertain feelings of friendship for someone when it is realized that he or she is acting in a friendly way solely for the purpose of facilitating an economic transaction. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2620

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Ties to Hardin’s ‘encapsulated interest’ account of trust — trust must be self-reinforcing, not manufactured sentiment.

Related

• Inter-firm trust cannot rest on friendship because instrumental friendliness is self-defeating (similarity 0.87)
• Interfirm trust is not reducible to sentiment or friendship. (similarity 0.85)
• Trust cannot be induced at will and breaks down when instrumentality is detected (similarity 0.85)
• Trust flourishes most where neither kinship nor contract obligations apply (similarity 0.82)
• No consistent analytical case exists for trust beyond encapsulated interest (similarity 0.82)
• Trust can be deliberately simulated and codified far beyond its natural sources (similarity 0.82)
• Trust is encapsulated interest achievable through many incentive mechanisms (similarity 0.81)
• Building stable relations generates the incentives that produce trust (similarity 0.81)
• Honourable motives alone cannot sustain reliable trust (similarity 0.80)
• Well-established institutions make trust unobtrusive; unsettled ones demand urgent trust (similarity 0.80)
• Trust is produced through gifts rather than required as a precondition for association (similarity 0.80)
• Trust can be extended to create an obligation in the trusted (similarity 0.80)
• Building mutual trust requires confronting risk rather than avoiding it (similarity 0.79)
• Trust can arise even when transactions are not embedded in social relations. (similarity 0.79)
• Trust should not be economized even without supportive feelings and networks (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Trust cannot be induced at will and breaks down when instrumentality is detected #corroborates (0.90) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2841
• Mere incentive compatibility is insufficient for trust as encapsulated interest #corroborates (0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 71
• Trust reduces future complexity where instrumental mastery cannot #corroborates (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 128
• Reducing distrust is different from generating trust #expands (0.75) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 754