Noncognitive trust cannot be empirically separated from learned trust in behavioral data

Evidence

If our differentiation of whom to distrust and how much is so finegrained as to allow us to trust our close associates very much and to distrust our ruler almost entirely, the role of our noncognitive trust in motivating us seems quite limited, and its role in explaining actual behavior seems likely to be limited as well. Unfortunately, if we wish to separate noncognitive from cognitive trusting behavior, we will most likely find them thoroughly run together in any kind of data we could imagine collecting. If my learning of whom to trust fits any standard learning theory (see chapter 5), it will look for all the world like a disposition. Trying to show that such a disposition is noncognitive rather than learned will be extremely difficult if not impossible. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 348

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Saramago/Luhmann/Hardin synthesis — the fine-grained differentiation of trust (close associates vs. ruler) is precisely what blindness destroys in Blindness when monitoring collapses.
• QUESTION: If noncognitive and cognitive trust are empirically inseparable, does that undercut the clean ‘observability collapse’ causal story in Blindness?