Survey answers about general trust reflect low-stakes dealings, not deep trust.

Evidence

If I say I can trust most people most of the time, I may merely be saying I trust most of those I deal with most of the time. Of course, that is partly why I deal with them and not lots of other people whom I would not trust most of the time. (I might actively distrust some of them and be agnostic about others.) … Moreover, even if I trust most of those I deal with most of the time, that is because most of the time there is little at stake in my dealings with them—I would not trust many of them for very high stakes. My trust is of you to do X, and making X a large matter can drastically affect whether I would trust you. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 315

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the reader’s Hardin synthesis: trust even of familiar others collapses when stakes rise — which in the Saramago world means the stakes of survival in a blind society exceed any ordinary trust threshold.