Love commonly produces trust rather than presupposing it
Evidence
Annette Baier (1985, 58) says that “it is fairly obvious that love … involves trust,” but this is not obvious at all. Many people have had the doleful experience of deeply loving someone they did not trust. The pattern of “misplaced” love in some cases recalls a spoof of the standard theme of country and western songs: “I can’t love you, baby, if you won’t leave me.” Even reciprocal love need not require extensive trust. It seems likely that falling in love leads to experience that justifies trust, so that love commonly begets trust rather than the other way around. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 655
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- SEED: A possible essay angle: the direction of causality between love and trust, and when intimacy precedes rather than follows reliability — relevant to arranged versus love marriage debates.
Related
- Love does not obviously involve trust and usually precedes rather than follows it. (similarity 0.89)
- Love lets trust escalate fast without requiring shared associates or community support (similarity 0.85)
- Long acquaintance provides a better trust basis than sudden love (similarity 0.82)
- Falling in love substitutes for the knowledge that grounded trust normally requires. (similarity 0.80)
- Trust is not reducible to emotion the way joy might be (similarity 0.79)
- Primary emotional attachments ground trust that later extends far beyond them (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Love lets trust escalate fast without requiring shared associates or community support
#expands(0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 659 - Long acquaintance provides a better trust basis than sudden love
#qualifies(0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 652 - Trust grows out of the specific relationship between the parties
#expands(0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 876 - Trust is a result rather than a precondition of cooperation
#corroborates(0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 409 - Primary emotional attachments ground trust that later extends far beyond them
#expands(0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 289 - Readiness to trust itself varies and is not a fixed precondition
#corroborates(0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 298