Trust is at issue precisely when behavior is confidently predictable
Evidence
It is true that where there is no room for choice on the part of another, trust cannot be at issue. Yet it can be at issue when I am quite confident of your choice of action. In a particular context, it makes sense to say I trust most the person I think most likely to act in a certain way, and I trust least the person I think least likely to act that way. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 947
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Reverses the common ‘trust is for uncertainty’ intuition — resonates with Hardin’s encapsulated-interest view; uncertainty is not what makes trust needed.
Related
- Trust can be at issue even when a partner’s behavior is highly predictable (similarity 0.91)
- Trust requires genuine choice, occupying the space between determinism and indeterminacy (similarity 0.84)
- Distrust is often the rational default even in good relationships (similarity 0.83)
- Trust is a matter of knowledge and belief, not of choice or action. (similarity 0.82)
- Trusting another requires guessing her motivations, not computing odds (similarity 0.82)
- Trust is rational expectation about the trusted party’s self-interest (similarity 0.82)
- One cannot be obligated to trust in the absence of supporting evidence. (similarity 0.82)
- Choosing a partner at random under uncertainty is hope, not trust (similarity 0.82)
- Only encapsulated-interest accounts ground trust in prior trustworthiness judgments (similarity 0.81)
- Trust is a degree of expected probability, not a separate decision layered onto risk. (similarity 0.81)
- Dispositional trust theories explain only variation in risk-taking, not trust itself (similarity 0.81)
- Trustworthiness can hold universally while trust cannot rationally (similarity 0.81)
- Trust presupposes grounded expectations, not the absence of them (similarity 0.81)
- Most trust is unreflective, routinized background assumption rather than calculated risk (similarity 0.80)
- Situation-specific incentives override a person’s overall disposition in trust decisions (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Predictable regularity of behavior does not amount to trust
#corroborates(0.90) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 75