Personal trust rests on expecting others to keep the personality they display

Evidence

It is through systems of a special kind, namely human beings, that there comes into the world that enlargement of complexity on which trust is focused – this is freedom of action. It is not surprising, therefore, that trust is extended first and foremost to another human being, in that he is assumed to possess a personality, to constitute an ordered, not arbitrary, centre of a system of action, with which one can come to terms. Trust, then, is the generalized expectation that the other will handle his freedom, his uncanny potential for diverse action, in keeping with his personality – or, rather, in keeping with the personality which he has presented and made socially visible. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 185

Categorization

• DEFINE: This operationalizes Luhmann’s concept of personal trust as a generalized expectation about how another will use freedom of action — precisely the mechanism Giddens calls facework that Stevens foregoes.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s thesis: personal trust here is exactly the facework commitment Stevens avoids by deferring to the institution instead. Also connects to Goffman’s self-presentation.