Sanctions make trustworthiness a matter of self-interest rather than personal concern

Evidence

Much of our ordinary cooperative activity is embedded in groups of which we are members. Groups are themselves the focus of cooperation for collective purposes, and they can help to induce cooperative behavior by their members even in essentially dyadic relationships. In the former case, when we need collective action, we might wonder whether our groups can be trusted to cooperate in accomplishing our purpose. In the latter case, we often find that our groups oversee our individual actions and induce us to be cooperative even though we could not say that the group and its members trust us. The way small communities induce their members to behave in certain cooperative or coordinative ways is through sanctions for the violation of communal norms, among the most important of which is a norm of cooperativeness within the group. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 808 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Trust is sustained by sanctions of relational withdrawal or community shunning; Sanctions support trust only while the threat remains unspoken and latent; Sanctions carry a latent function of shaping guilt attribution and social standing (+11 more)

Related

• Enforced sanctions under governments underwrite all ordinary trust (similarity 0.92)
• Groups induce cooperation through sanctions even without trusting their members (similarity 0.91)
• Confinement to one community makes reputational sanctions powerful enough to guarantee repayment (similarity 0.90)
• Sanctions either alter egoistic utilities or provide assurance to cooperative agents. (similarity 0.86)
• Cooperation can occur without trust when incentives align (similarity 0.84)
• Close communities substitute communal sanctioning norms for dyadic trust relationships (similarity 0.81)
• Small groups succeed at collective action because dyadic trust motivates cooperation (similarity 0.80)
• Explaining how cooperative groups formed requires enforcement mechanisms, not just expulsion of the asocial. (similarity 0.79)
• Cooperative individuals sanction defectors far more than defectors do (similarity 0.79)
• Sanctions support trust only while the threat remains unspoken and latent (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Sanctions support trust only while the threat remains unspoken and latent #qualifies (0.85)
• Institutional and legal constraints give people strong external incentives to be trustworthy #corroborates (0.85)
• Groups induce cooperation through sanctions even without trusting their members #corroborates (0.82) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 808
• Sanctions carry a latent function of shaping guilt attribution and social standing #expands (0.80)