Trusted persons enjoy credit that absorbs unfavourable experiences up to a threshold

Evidence

Nevertheless, not every message threatens or disrupts trust. The trusted person enjoys a certain credit which allows even unfavourable experiences to be effectively reinterpreted or absorbed. As we shall argue, particularly in differentiating between trust and distrust (Chapter 10), control is exercised by means of thresholds which may not be crossed without the withdrawal of trust. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 163

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The threshold/credit concept explains precisely why Stevens tolerates Darlington’s Nazi appeasement for so long — until a single crossing of the threshold finally triggers the collapse. Central to the reader’s thesis.

Related

• Trust endures through absorptive credit until critical thresholds are crossed. (similarity 0.90)
• Trust thresholds are historically contingent, not natural or objective (similarity 0.83)
• System trust resists individual disappointments, unlike personal trust. (similarity 0.81)
• Trusting makes every small event symptomatically significant and trust fragile (similarity 0.80)
• Trust grows in discontinuous stages, not steady increments (similarity 0.80)
• Reflexive trust can absorb more uncertainty with less risk (similarity 0.80)
• Experience-based trust in trifling risks does not scale up to high-stakes trust (similarity 0.79)
• Thresholds compress graded experience into crude before-after discontinuities (similarity 0.79)
• Trust exceeds available information and remains irreducible risk (similarity 0.79)
• Optimism about others’ trustworthiness is self-reinforcing through gained experience (similarity 0.79)
• Trust clues only reduce risk, never eliminate the leap of faith. (similarity 0.78)
• Trust and distrust shift asymmetrically across behavioral thresholds (similarity 0.78)
• Winning trust requires participating socially and absorbing others’ expectations into one’s self-presentation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Reflexive trust can absorb more uncertainty with less risk #expands (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 258
• System trust survives individual disappointments that would destroy personal trust #expands (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 230
• Reflexive personal trust enables actions impossible by simple trust #expands (0.55) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 260