Social complexity forces the shift from personal to impersonal, system-governed trust.

Evidence

From this general analysis, it appears that, as far as the particular problem of trust is concerned, a change of mode will occur on the way to greater and more consciously articulated complexity. In anticipation of the following chapter, what follows from this suggestion may now be outlined. On the basis of familiarity with the everyday world, trust is principally interpersonal trust (and is therefore limited). It serves to overcome an element of uncertainty in the behaviour of other people which is experienced as the unpredictability of change in an object. In so far as the need for complexity grows, and in so far as the other person enters the picture both as alter ego and as fellow-author of this complexity and of its reduction, trust has to be extended, and the original unquestionable familiarity of the world pushed back, although it cannot be eliminated completely. It becomes as a result a new form of system trust, which implies renouncing as a conscious risk some possible further information and implies as well a wary indifference to and a continuous control of results. System trust is not only applicable to social systems but also to other people as personal systems. This change, if one looks closely at the assumptions which lie within the mode of trusting, corresponds to a change from bases of trust which are defined in primarily emotional terms, to those which are primarily performance based. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

These considerations confirm our conjecture that, under the conditions set by civilized society, personal trust becomes a type of system trust in the ability of systems to maintain conditions or performances which are, within certain limits, identical. Other examples of system trust also show this characteristically reflex engagement with fictions that is functioning. For example, whether one is a member or outsider, one trusts large organized systems which process goods or data, although one knows that the objectives of these systems are not the goals of the people who work in them. Rather one knows that everyone concerned in them must be motivated by complex, prone-to-failure and not readily visible detours to produce four-fruit jam, insurance notices, or whatever. The purchasing power of money is trusted, although currency is known to rest on an overdraft, so to speak, and is not covered by a corresponding value in the institutions which issue the currency. It rests instead on the expectation, supported by experience, that not everyone wants to turn his money credits into real cash simultaneously. One relies on the fact that the state has the power to guarantee peace and make decisions about problems, although one knows that its power of coercion is not adequate to do these things, if a considerable percentage of the population were to rebel at the same time or refuse to recognize decisions. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 257 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Stevens embodies Giddens’s faceless commitments, but Luhmann shows system trust enables ethical abdication; Trust requires freedom be transferred from uncontrollable potency to institutionalized personal responsibility.; Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143 (+24 more)

Related

• Trust expands a system’s complexity potential and buys it time (similarity 0.93)
• Differentiated societies need more trust to reduce their greater complexity (similarity 0.92)
• System trust operates independently of individuals’ personal readiness to trust (similarity 0.92)
• Trust and law evolved from a common root into differentiated mechanisms (similarity 0.92)
• Personal trust becomes system trust under civilized conditions (similarity 0.91)
• Growing social complexity increases the need for trust in the present (similarity 0.91)
• System trust reduces complexity through explicit human decision processes, not naive familiarity (similarity 0.90)
• Modern trust takes the form of trust in specialized information processing (similarity 0.88)
• Trust requires freedom be transferred from uncontrollable potency to institutionalized personal responsibility. (similarity 0.88)
• Luhmann reframed trust as social, not merely psychological (similarity 0.88)
• Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust (similarity 0.87)
• Institutionalized money trust replaces countless individual acts of personal trust (similarity 0.87)
• Trust expands the complexity a social system can sustain. (similarity 0.87)
• Luhmann reformulates sociology by developing a comprehensive unified theory in which trust is a mechanism for reducing social complexity. (similarity 0.86)
• As societies grow more complex, trust shifts from shared worldviews to specialized competence. (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust #corroborates (0.90) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143
• Personal trust becomes system trust under civilized conditions #corroborates (0.70) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 257