Recurrent encounters with hidden breaches make trust harder to violate

Evidence

Trust relationships find a favourable soil in social contexts with the same kind of structure, i.e. characterized by the relative persistence of the relationship, by reciprocal dependencies, and a certain quality of the unforeseen. The overriding consideration is the law of meeting again. The participants will have to go on seeing each other. This makes it more difficult for trust to be breached, at any rate when any breach could not be hidden from the partner or acceptable excuses offered. It appears, therefore, that social systems which are thrown upon mutual trust to an exceptional extent by the very structure of their internal interdependencies at the same time also generate more favourable conditions for the emergence of trust. That is, possibilities of sanction produce a generalizing effect in the context not only of hierarchical relations, but also of those between equals. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 181

Categorization

• XREF: This is Luhmann’s version of game-theory repeated-interaction cooperation that Milgrom formalized in the Champagne Fairs law-merchant work; both explain why recurring relationships discipline breaches.
• DEFINE: The ‘law of meeting again’ is a recurring Luhmannian principle that reappears in Trust Chapter, worth capturing as a named mechanism.