Seen-through trust reduces complexity less efficiently than spontaneous trust

Evidence

True seen-through trust has one serious disadvantage in comparison with spontaneous trust. It demands more caution, more consideration from the truster. He does not trust the other person directly, but rather trusts the grounds on which trust ‘still works’. He is thereby continually conscious of other possibilities. What this means can be made clear with regard to the function of trust in reducing complexity. Seen-through trust fulfils this function less well than spontaneous trust. It places a greater burden of complexity on the actor and is thus psychologically more difficult. One would therefore be able to expect it only as a peak performance under particularly secure and continually sustained circumstances – for example, as the kind of behaviour associated with a higher educated class of society, or the upper levels of a bureaucracy, or with particular milieu, like political or economic spheres, where the effects on other areas of life can be relatively well controlled. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 256

Categorization

• DEFINE: Here Luhmann defines the distinction between ‘seen-through’ (reflexive) trust and spontaneous trust, key to understanding system trust.
• XREF: This distinction maps onto Giddens’s facework versus faceless commitments — seen-through trust is the institutional/faceless form. — connects to: System trust stays latent and beyond open discussion; System trust reduces complexity through explicit human decision processes, not naive familiarity; Trust reduces the truster’s complexity while transferring that burden onto the trusted — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 245 (+11 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 256

Broader Connections

• Trust reduces social complexity by replacing missing information with guaranteed security #qualifies (0.70)
• Trust reduces complexity by substituting inner certainty for external certainty #qualifies (0.70) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 154
• Trust functions by pruning the over-complex future to fit the present #expands (0.60)
• Trust reduces future complexity where instrumental mastery cannot #expands (0.55)
• Reflexive trust can absorb more uncertainty with less risk #qualifies (0.55)
• Trust reduces future complexity by committing to a determinate future #expands (0.50) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 138