Most empirical trust research cannot assess relational trust because it omits relationships

Evidence

If trust is grounded in encapsulated interest, then clearly it is, as noted earlier, relational. It is not merely a reflection of my character or yours. Little of the systematic empirical work on trust allows us to assess any relational elements. Much of the psychological work is on high and low trusters. Most of the survey work is on relatively loose claims of how much subjects “trust” most people or government. The game theoretic work often deliberately excludes any possibility that the players will have any broader relationship—often, for example, the adversary-partner of a player is unknown and will not be met again after a single, initial interaction. Claims from these bodies of empirical research therefore can tell us virtually nothing about trust as encapsulated interest or any other relational conception of trust. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 161

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s Hardin/Luhmann integration — the blindness experiment (observability collapse) is precisely the relational-observation substrate these empirical studies strip out. — connects to: Ceremonial relationship is an unmeasurable variable excluded from experiments — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 562
• QUESTION: Which empirical designs could actually capture relational trust? The critique names a methodological gap without offering a concrete alternative test.