Trusting a person gives a moral hostage to fortune, making trust psychologically consequential.
Evidence
Trust is basically bound up, not with risk, but with contingency. Trust always carries the connotation of reliability in the face of contingent outcomes, whether these concern the actions of individuals or the operation of systems. In the case of trust in human agents, the presumption of reliability involves the attribution of “probity” (honour) or love. This is why trust in persons is psychologically consequential for the individual who trusts: a moral hostage to fortune is given. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 85
Categorization
- XREF: “A moral hostage to fortune is given” is a direct lens for Stevens’s lifelong commitment to Darlington’s honour — the hostage is what makes his post-revelation collapse so total. — connects to: Trust requires genuine vulnerability and the partner’s real interest in betraying it; Misplaced trust damages the trusting person’s presented self-image as well as their interests
Related
- Trust requires genuine vulnerability and the partner’s real interest in betraying it (similarity 0.89)
- Trust is wrongly conflated with promise-keeping and entrusting (similarity 0.84)
- Trust requires both freedom to betray and constraint making the relationship worthwhile. (similarity 0.83)
- Misplaced trust damages the trusting person’s presented self-image as well as their interests (similarity 0.83)
- Trust cannot be demanded but only offered through vulnerability (similarity 0.83)
- Trust requires controlling one’s own readiness to accept risk (similarity 0.83)
- Trust itself is an act of self-presentation exposing the truster to ridicule if misplaced (similarity 0.82)
- Trust involves a calculable asymmetry of possible harm, while hope does not (similarity 0.82)
- Trust reduces to knowledge while trustworthiness is motivational (similarity 0.82)
- Trust is a degree of expected probability, not a separate decision layered onto risk. (similarity 0.82)
- Moralizing trust often stems from confusing it with trustworthiness (similarity 0.81)
- Trust operates where parties are both free and constrained (similarity 0.81)
- Primary emotional attachments ground trust that later extends far beyond them (similarity 0.81)
- Trustworthiness is interest-relative, not a fixed trait of character. (similarity 0.81)
- Trust requires a risky advance where the trusted party could plausibly profit from betrayal (similarity 0.81)