Mere expectation-based trust theories are half-strategic and miss second-order effects.

Evidence

Various social scientific accounts of trust take for granted that trust is rational in the sense of being based on empirically grounded expectations of another person’s (or an institution’s) behavior (Barber 1983; Luhmann 1980). Trust can lead to intentional or motivational moves by the trusted as well as by the truster. A rational analysis of trust of another intentional being, as opposed to “trust” of a force of nature (our “trust” that it will not rain on a July day in Palo Alto), must take account of the rationality of both intentional parties. Indeed, in a trust relationship, I must think strategically, because my purposes are served by the interaction between what I do and what another does (or others do). My outcome is the joint outcome of both our actions. In this sense, mere expectation accounts are only half strategic, and they therefore fail to address the central nature of trust relationships. They have a liability not unlike that of the similarly half-strategic Cournot theory of market behavior. In the Cournot theory, actors assume regularity of behavior on the part of others in the market in order better to decide how to act themselves; but, although they are strategic in responding to others’ actions, they suppose that others are not strategic in responding to them. Hence they fail to take account of secondorder effects of others’ responses to their actions. Cournot actors are somewhat smart but they think others are dumb. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 77

Categorization

• XREF: The Cournot half-strategic failure directly echoes the reader’s Luhmann frame: familiarity/monitoring works only when both parties are strategically responsive — exactly what blindness destroys by removing the trusted’s observability of the truster.
• DEFINE: Defines the essential asymmetry between trusting an intentional agent versus a force of nature — only the former is genuinely strategic trust.