Loose social conventions undermine our capacity to make credible long-term commitments

Evidence

There are at least three reasons to believe that a socially extensive and enduring trust is not an easy thing to create. The first of these is clear in Bernard Williams’s contribution to this volume. Williams distinguishes a class of what he calls ‘micro’ motives which are ‘non-egoistic’. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1499 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Our problem in asserting our trustworthiness is similar to Alberich’s in asserting his disavowal of ever loving or lusting. When the time comes to live up to our assertions, we may face forcefully contrary motivations. Other things being equal, we might readily fulfill our commitment. Other things are often not at all equal, however. Once we already have whatever led us to our commitment in the first place, we may no longer find it in our interest to keep the commitment, even though, if we had been able to get our benefit and fulfill our commitment in a single moment, we might happily have done so. What we lose when receipt of the benefit and fulfillment of the commitment are separated in time is the coupling of the motivations into, in essence, a single motivation. It would be strange in the future moment to say that we violate our earlier motivation when we no longer wish to fulfill our commitment. This is the central problem of bald commitments into the future: we cannot tie our future and present motivations together to yield a single “net” motivation for action. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 205 (#expands, via linked claim)

As against this, there is the future orientation of trust. Trust is only possible in a familiar world; it needs history as a reliable background. One cannot confer trust without this essential basis and without all previous experiences. But rather than being just an inference from the past, trust goes beyond the information it derives from the past and takes the risk of defining the future. The complexity of the future world is reduced by the act of trust. In trusting, one engages in action as though there were only certain possibilities in the future. One fixes one’s present future to a future present. In this way one offers other people a determinate future, a common future, which is not readily apparent from the past. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 138 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sustained commitment usually depends on external social institutions for enforcement.; Public commitment makes future fulfillment costly to renege on by invoking present social constraints; Socially extensive and enduring trust is inherently difficult to create — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1499 (+13 more)

Related

• Socially extensive and enduring trust is inherently difficult to create (similarity 0.88)
• Sustained commitment usually depends on external social institutions for enforcement. (similarity 0.83)
• Trust flourishes most where neither kinship nor contract obligations apply (similarity 0.83)
• Public commitment makes future fulfillment costly to renege on by invoking present social constraints (similarity 0.82)
• Time-separated commitments cannot couple present and future motivations into a single net motivation (similarity 0.81)
• Trust requires that reality’s conditions and the strains of commitment stay manageable (similarity 0.81)
• Trust reduces social complexity by replacing missing information with guaranteed security (similarity 0.80)
• Trust requires belief in the other’s motivations, not mere behavioral expectation (similarity 0.79)
• Social institutions function through trust only at the individual micro level (similarity 0.79)
• Contracting, not trust, brings the future into the present (similarity 0.78)
• Widespread civility and flourishing civil society reduce to shared personal trust (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Socially extensive and enduring trust is inherently difficult to create #corroborates (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1499
• Time-separated commitments cannot couple present and future motivations into a single net motivation #expands (0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 205
• Trust reduces future complexity by committing to a determinate future #expands (0.84) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 138
• Social norms make people present stable identities that others can trust #corroborates (0.80)
• Openly negotiated interdependence undermines trust that existing systems breed silently #complicates (0.80)
• Moral trust requires temporally stable social contexts to operate #qualifies (0.78)
• Equal opportunity cannot compensate for lost capacity to trust #corroborates (0.75)
• Social institutions function through trust only at the individual micro level #complicates (0.74)
• Trust reduces social complexity by replacing missing information with guaranteed security #corroborates (0.72)
• Traditional social structures and orders can disintegrate over time #corroborates (0.72)
• Cooperation rests on coercion, interests, values, and personal bonds #qualifies (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2202