What Is Trust?
All Who Wander Are Not Lost
To build on my prior post positing that we (big-D-Democrats) had lost our way. Or, if not lost, at least created so many gate checks to the goal the party got lost in the queue. In other words, the usual systems of political meritocracy were so untrustworthy that core tenants had to be tightly judged for alignment before proceeding.
Do you trust your health care will be there for you when you need it? Do you trust in your safety for retirement? Do you trust that the roads will not cause undue wear and tear on your car? Do you trust that every child is achieving a basic education? Do you trust your employer or co-workers not to discriminate based on race or gender?
Or, stated differently, when the whole world is on (metaphorical) fire, it’s hard to prioritize fires. Especially when empirical evidence seems to suggest that nothing is actually on fire in many cases.
Gates are Binary
We had declared the systems untrustworthy and created a gate: do you pass or not, zero or one. You only pass with a one. Health Care can only be trusted if it is single-payer; do you believe in single-payer, yes or no? If no, you are not a Democrat. Commitment to diversity is more important than commitment to profits; yes or no? If no, you are not a Democrat. Private School Vouchers are tools of classism; if you disagree, you are not a Democrat.
This system is untrustworthy for two reasons: 1) it creates smaller pools of better candidates, but it could result in zero candidates; and 2) Who decides which issues are gates and which candidates have to go through which gates? It is both untrustworthy in its results and untrustworthy in its application.
Similarly with government institutions: how do we know it’s working? and could the money be better spent? Who is the better actor, the people or the market? Or, more abstractly: ability, benevolence, and integrity.1
“Trust is crucial wherever risk, uncertainty, or interdependence exist. … As conditions become more uncertain because of downsizing, mergers, and more complex business dealings, the need for trust grows.” McKnight, D. Harrison and Chervany, Norman L., "What is Trust? A Conceptual Analysis and an Interdisciplinary Model" (2000). AMCIS 2000 Proceedings. 382.
What is Trust?
Trust is a form of reliance; reliance is in turn a form of confidence. Or, think about it this way: Z can be confident that A will happen (confidence); Z can rely on Y to make A more likely to happen (reliance); Z believe that Y has a responsibility (either moral or normative) to make A more likely to happen (trust).2
Reliance is made more likely by Y’s competence, motivation, and opportunity with respect to Z and A (or what we called “ability, benevolence, and integrity” above). In other words if Z believes that Y is competent at making A occur, that Y is motivated to make A occur, and Y has the opportunity to make A occur, then Z will rely on Y to perform A, even if Y is unaware of Z’s reliance. Upon Y’s failure to make A happen, Y holds no blame to Z for the failure of A.
However, Y may be aware of Z’s reliance; maybe Y has suggested to Z that Z be reliant on Y performing A; at the least Y continues to let Z believe that Y has a responsibility Z for making A happen. Both Z and Y believe that Y is responsible to Z for making A happen. Z trusts Y with respect to A.
That is, when Y does not do A (or does not care for A), then Y is prima facie blameworthy for not A-ing, but only if it was in Y’s power to A (if the voluntariness condition of moral responsibility is satisfied) and if Y knew (or should have known) that he was normatively responsible for A (if the epistemic condition of moral responsibility is also satisfied). This explains why we tend to blame people who breach our trust. id.
Wha?
Trust means that each of two parties believe that one party is responsible to another for a particular outcome. Thus, we lose trust when one of three things happens:
Z no longer believes Y capable, motivated, or have the opportunity to perform A
Y no longer believes it is responsible to Z for A
A is longer the within the purview of Y
Tell me if any of these sound familiar:
The government is really bad at managing the health care market (ability)
Gee, that hospital is only concerned about its Directors (benevolence)
The FDA is losing enforcement funding. (integrity)
Each of these erodes trust. We prove our trust by demonstrating capability, motivation, and opportunity and that we stand ready to be relied upon. We cannot control others reliance or belief, but we can control and demonstrate our competency, motivation, and opportunity.
In my next post I’ll talk about my theory of how.
Xiu, D., Liu, Z. (2005). A Formal Definition for Trust in Distributed Systems. In: Zhou, J., Lopez, J., Deng, R.H., Bao, F. (eds) Information Security. ISC 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3650. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
de Fine Licht, K., Brülde, B. On Defining “Reliance” and “Trust”: Purposes, Conditions of Adequacy, and New Definitions. Philosophia 49, 1981–2001 (2021).