Trust develops where rewards are small, threats absent, and communication easy.

Evidence

To briefly summarize the content of this section, then, we may propose that in conditions where the long-term interests of the participants are stressed, where only small initial or additional rewards are at stake, where there is no potential for threat and great potential for successful communication in that the ambiguity of the situation is reduced, and where the participants are in free and easy contact, then cooperation and, one might suggest, a certain level of trust can develop. In some respects, the result concerning small initial rewards or small increments, and that concerning the consequences of the absence.of threat, might seem counter-intuitive. If there is so little at stake, why should one bother with all the difficulties associated with trusting someone else, and why should the absence of an ability to penalize a defaulter lead to greater apparent trust? — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 592

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s synthetic argument: small stakes + low ambiguity + no threat as antecedents of trust parallel Saramago’s collapse, where stakes become existential and communication fails.