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8.1 Irrational Basis for Trust?
8.1.1 Is Trust a Belief in the Other's Irrationality?
The predictability/reliability aspect of trust has been an object of study in social sciences,
and they correctly stress the relationship between sincerity, honesty (reputation), friendliness,
and trust. However, sometimes this has not been formulated in a very linear way; especially
under the perspective of game theory and within the framework (the mental syndrome) of the
Prisoner Dilemma .
Consider for example the notion of trust as used and paraphrased in Gambetta's interdisci-
plinary topic on trust, on the basis of (Deutsch, 1958). It can be enounced like this: 'When I
say that I trust Y , I mean that I believe that, put on test, Y would act in a way favorable to me,
even though this choice would not be the most convenient for him AT THAT MOMENT' . 3
So formulated, (considering subjective rationality) trust is the belief that Y will choose and
will behave in a non-rational way! How might he otherwise choose against his interest? To
choose what is perceived as less convenient? This is the usual dilemma in the prisoner dilemma
game : the only rational move is to defeat.
Since trust is one of the pillars of society (no social exchange, alliance, cooperation, institu-
tion, group, is possible without trust), should we conclude that the entire society is grounded on
the irrationality of the agents : either the irrationality of Y , or the irrationality of X in believing
that Y will act irrationally, against his better interest!
As usual in arguments and models inspired by rational decision theory or game theory,
together with 'rationality', 'selfishness' and 'economic motives' (utility, profit) are also smug-
gled. We disagree about this reading of rationality: when I trust Y in strong delegation (social
commitment by Y ) I'm not assuming that he - by not defeating me - will act irrationally,
i.e. against his interests. Perhaps he acts 'economically irrationally' (i.e. sacrificing in the
meanwhile his economic goals); perhaps he acts in an unselfish way, preferring some altruistic
or pro-social or normative motive to his selfish goals; but he is not irrational because he is
just following his subjective preferences and motives, and those include friendship, or love, or
norms, or honesty, avoiding possible negative feelings (guilt, shame, regret,
), etc. It is not
such a complicated view to include within the subjective motives (rewards and outcomes) the
real spectrum of human motives, with their value, and thus determining our choices, beyond
the strictly (sometimes only with a short life) 'economic' outcomes.
Thus when X trusts Y she is simply assuming that other motivations (his values) will in any
case prevail over his economic interests or other selfish goals. So we would like to change
...
3 See also recently (Deutsch, 1958): '
. a more limited meaning of the term implies that the trustworthy
person is aware of being trusted and that he is somehow bound by the trust which is invested in him. For
this more specific meaning, we shall employ the term 'responsible.' Being responsible to the trust of another
implies that the responsible person will produce 'X' (the behavior expected of him by the trusting individual), even
if producing MY' (behavior which violates the trust) is more immediately advantageous to him .'. See also
(Bacharach and Gambetta, 2001) ' We say that a person 'trusts someone to do X' if she acts on the expecta-
tion that he will do X when both know that two conditions obtain:
...
if he fails to do X she would have done better to act otherwise, and
her acting in the way she does gives him a selfish reason not to do X.'. Notice in this definition the important
presence of: 'to do', 'acts', 'expectation'.
 
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