Trusting another requires guessing her motivations, not computing odds

Evidence

A central element in my trusting another, however, is the presumption not merely that she will do what she says but that she will do it for reasons of her own interest—for example, in maintaining her relationship with me—in fulfilling my trust. I should therefore think strategically, because my outcome is a function of both my actions and her actions taken together. Hence, I have to think through or guess at her motivations. This is not a matter of computing the odds in an interaction with nature, and it is not determinate. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 942

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the strategic/encapsulated-interest core of Hardin’s account against Becker’s probabilistic view.
• XREF: Directly refutes Becker’s framing of trust as risk computation, which the reader’s analytical integration treats as the baseline Luhmannian expectation-tracking problem.