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An important consideration we have to take is that a dependence network is mainly based on
the set of actions, plans and resources owned by the agents and necessary for achieving the
agents' goals (we considered a set of tasks each agent is able to achieve; its 'power of'). The
interesting thing is that the dependence network is modified by the dynamics of the agents'
goals: from their variations (as they evolve in time), from the emergency of new ones, from the
disappearance of old ones, from the increasing request of a subset of them, and so on (Pollack,
1990). On this basis, the role of each agent in the dependence network changes, which in fact
changes the trust capital of the involved agents.
Relational capital
can also be circulated inside a given society. If somebody has a good
reputation and is trusted by somebody else, they can be sure this reputation will be passed on
and transfered to other agents - and this is always considered a good marketing strategy, word
of mouth. What is not clear yet is how these phenomena work. But when trust in an agent
circulates, it is strategically important for the agent to know how this happens and which paths
(not only figuratively) trust follows.
In fact, not all the ways are the same: it is possible that being trusted by a particular agent
could mean that he just has one more agent in his relational capital, but gaining the trust of
another agent can be very useful to him and exponentially increase his capital thanks to the
strategic role or position of this other agent. That said, the importance of understanding if and
how much an agent is able to manage this potentiality of his capital should be clear.
Basically, here also, a crucial part is played by the involved agents: for this reason it is
necessary for an agent to know
the multiplicative factors
represented by the recognized and
trusted evaluator in society. It is not necessarily true, in fact, that when somebody trusts
somebody else and they in turn trust a third one, the first one will trust the third one: the
crucial question is 'which role does the first ascribe to the second'. If the second one is trusted
as an evaluator by
X
, then
X
can trust the third one to achieve specific goals (see Chapter
6 for the analysis of the
trust transitivity
). Usually how well these transitive processes work
depends on what kind of broadcasting and how many links the evaluator has and how much
he is trusted in each of those links, so, basically, it depends on the evaluator's relational
capital.
10.3.2 Strategic Behavior of the Trustee
Up until now we have just considered trust as something quantitatively changeable, but we
did not talk about subjective difference in the way trust is perceived by the two parts of the
relationship. Nevertheless, to be realistic, we must take into account the fact that there is
often a difference between how the others actually trust an agent (
OTC(Ag
i
,
τ
k
)
) and what the
agent believes about (
STC(Ag
i
,
τ
k
)
); but also between this and the level of trustworthiness that
an agent perceives in themsel (we can refer to the
ST(Ag
i
,
τ
k
)
factor for this). Since being
able is not necessarily the reason for trust: it can be a diffuse atmosphere that makes the
others trust the agent, although the agent doesn't possess all the characteristics required to be
trusted.
In fact, these subjective aspects of trust are fundamental to the process of managing this
capital, since it can be possible that the capital is there but the agent does not know how to
reach it. Can it be possible to use the relational capital even if the person who uses it is not
aware of having it?
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