I think that trust between people (or organizations of people) falls into two categories (doesn't everything? 🙂):
1. Direct Trust
This is trust in future performance based on a sufficient history of past performance to use as a predictor. In practice, this need not be as cold as it sounds. You trust your grandmother because she's shown her love for you all your life -- you don't have to consciously reevaluate that calculation every time you see her for that to be true.
2. Brokered Trust
This is when you trust one entity because another entity you already trust vouches for its trustworthiness. Often this form of trust is situational -- you trust someone to perform a particular type of action, but maybe not other types. For example, you trust the mailman to deliver your incoming mail to you and your outgoing mail to the post office, because your government says you can trust him to do so (hmm, maybe you *don't* trust the mailman, then....); but you might not trust the mailman to deliver your child to a neighbor's house further along his route.
I think that included in the category of brokered trust is society- or community-based trust. You trust banks not to steal your money because you trust that government regulatory agencies will prevent them, and that the legal system will punish them if they're not prevented. When the government is proved to be not so trustworthy in its role as overseer of the banks, then trust in banks is diminished.
In a community, you trust the people sitting next to you at your local prayer services not to shout obscenities at you while you relax on your porch. This is because the community would punish them for such acts, by ostracism, etc. The community exerts powerful psychological pressure on its members to adhere to the community's standards of behavior. This does not absolutely prevent all bad acts, but it fosters trust among member of the community.
Similarly, virtual communities have standards of behavior, and a desire by their members to remain members in good standing. This is why we RFF members trust people we don't know personally to honestly complete transactions involving thousands of dollars' worth of camera equipment shipped around the world. In the vast majority of cases this works out fine, as it should. If the parties were not constrained by a shared interest in remaining members in good standing of RFF, I submit that there would be a far higher incidence of cheating.
3. A Priori Trust (wait, I thought there were only 2 categories?!)
Adopting a stance of trust toward fellow humans with whom you have neither a direct nor a brokered relationship, may be a laudable thing from the perspective of personal morality or character development. We would like to believe that everyone can be trusted until they prove otherwise, because this makes daily interactions with strangers far less anxiety-producing.
I submit that this *not*, in fact, trust; it is a form of hope or faith. Trust-until-untrustworty vs. distrust-until-trustworthy is not an example of glass-half-full vs. glass-half-empty. As Simon mentioned above, trust, like respect, must be earned; trust or respect conferred in advance of experience is superficial indeed, and not to be confused with the real thing.
Regards,
Ari
