The Economic Reductionism and Trust (Ir)rationality - Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational Model - page 252

8.6 Does Trust Presuppose Reciprocity?
Following the model proposed in this topic, it is possible to contradict a typical unprincipled
and arbitrary restriction of the notion and of the theory of trust, present in some of the
economic-like approaches. It is based on a restriction of trust only to exchange relations,
in contexts implying reciprocity . It is, of course, perfectly legitimated and acceptable to be
interested in a sub-domain of the broader domain of trust (say 'trust in exchange relations'),
and to propose and use a (sub)notion of trust limited to those contexts and cases (possibly
coherent or at least compatible with a more general notion of trust). What would be less
acceptable is to propose a restricted notion of something - fitting within a particular frame and
specific issues - as the only one that is valid.
Consider, by way of an example, one of those limited kinds of definition, clearly game
theory inspired, and proposed by R. Kurzban ((Kurzban, 2001), (Kurzban, 2003)): trust is
'the willingness to enter exchanges in which one incurs a cost without the other already
having done so' . As we have seen the most important and basic constituents of the men-
tal attitude underlying trust behavior are already present (and more clear) in non-exchange
situations.
Y can do an action to help X with many motives not including reciprocation; analogously, X
can rely on Y 's action to have a broad set of different motives ascribed to Y (for instance, friend-
ship, honesty, generosity, search for admiration, etc.) and the reasons active in cooperation,
exchange, reciprocation situations, are only a subset of them.
It is simply not true that we either feel trust or not, and we have to decide to trust or not,
only in contexts of reciprocation , when we do something for the other or give something to
the other and expect (wish) that the other would reciprocate by doing his share. This notion
of trust is arbitrarily restricted and it cannot be useful to describe in detail the case where
Y simply and unilaterally offers and promises to X that he will do a given action α for her,

and X decides to count on Y , does not commit herself to personally perform , and trusts Y

for accomplishing the task. The very notion of trust must include cases like this that describe
real life situations. Should we even search just for a 'behavioral' notion? Doing nothing and
counting on others is in fact a behavior.
Even cases based on an explicit agreement do not necessarily require reciprocation . Con-
sider a real life situation where X asks Y 'Could you please say this to the Director, when you
see her; I have no time; I'm leaving now' . She is in fact trusting Y to really do the required
action. Y is expected to do this not out of reciprocation (but, say, for courtesy, friendship, pity,
altruism, etc.).
One might claim that X has given something to Y : his gentle 'Please' ; and Y has to do the
required action in order to reciprocate the 'Please' . But this is frequently not true since this is
usually not doing enough: it is not the reason X expects of Y (in fact X has to be grateful after
the action and she is in debt); it is not what Y feels or the reason why he does the action; he
feels that his cost greatly exceeds the received homage. Moreover, there might be other kinds
of requests, based on authority, hierarchy, etc. when X doesn't give anything at all to Y 'in
exchange' for the required action which is simply 'due'. But, in these cases X also considers
Y to be trustworthy if she is relying on him. In sum: trust is not an expectation of recipro-
cation; and doesn't apply only to reciprocation situations . Related to this misunderstanding
is the fact that 'being vulnerable' is often considered as strictly connected with 'anticipating
costs'.

α