Trust reduces to anticipating the trusted’s incentives toward us

Evidence

Luhmann says (1980, 88), for example, that trust is at least partly something other than a reasonable assumption on which to decide correctly whether to risk cooperating with someone, and for this reason models for calculating correct decisions miss the point of the question of trust. Such remarks miss a core element that is captured in the encapsulated-interest account. One part of a reasonable assumption on which to decide correctly is some sense of what the trusted is likely to do as a result of my acting on my trust of him or her. Often the something else is the belief that the trusted will have incentive to fulfill the trust for reasons of his or her relationship with me. That relationship can be direct in the sense that we will potentially be interacting repeatedly over time, to the benefit of both of us; or it can be indirect, through reputational effects. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 370

Categorization

• DEFINE: Encapsulated-interest account spelled out: trust is a belief about the trusted’s incentives arising from the relationship — repeated interaction or reputation.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s Saramago analysis: in ‘Blindness’ the doctor’s wife’s care for others is trustworthiness grounded in relationship, not monitoring. — connects to: Organizational incentives silence dissent inside firms riding unsustainable leverage — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 900; Personal trust shifts the odds in the trustor’s favour by incentivizing good behavior — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 1204