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my own behavior of contributing, on the other, must be distinguished. We cannot simply label
them both 'trust'.
Second, the confusion between 'tendency to trust' and 'tendency to cooperate/contribute',
and between 'not trusting' and 'not cooperating/contributing' is misleading per se. If
X
co-
operates just in order to avoid possible sanctions from the authority or group, trust is not
involved.
X
does not contribute because he either trusts or does not trust the others, but rather
for fear of sanctions - in fact, the only thing that
X
is trusting are the social authorities and
their capacity for monitoring and sanctioning his conduct ((Castelfranchi and Falcone, 1998)
(Falcone and Castelfranchi, 2001)). Calling this cognitive attitude 'tendency to trust' may be
quite confusing. This is not simply a problem of terminology and conceptual confusion; it is
a problem of
behavioral
notions that are proposed as
psychological
ones.
10
Finally, here the concept of 'trusting' ends up losing its meaning completely. By missing the
fundamental elements of having a positive evaluation of others and good expectations about
their behavior, and because of these reasons relying on them and becoming vulnerable to them,
this notion of trust comes to mean just to cooperate (in a game theoretical sense), to contribute
to the collective welfare and to risk for whatever reason. The resulting equation 'Trust
=
to
contribute/cooperate'; 'untrust
do not contribute/cooperate' is wrong in both senses:
there
are cooperative behaviors without any trust in the others, as well as there being trust in the
others in non-cooperative situations
.
We have to say that simply cooperating for whatever reason is not to trust. The idea that
this
behavior
necessarily denotes trust by the agent and is based on this, so that the behavior
can be used as a synonym of the attitude, is wrong. For example, as we have already said,
worrying about institutional sanctions from the authority has nothing to do with putting one's
trust
in
the other. Confusion between these two attitudes is fostered, among other things, by
the fact that, usually, it is not specified in whom and about what a given subject trusts another,
and based on what expectations and evaluations one has on the other. One should be clear
in distinguishing between
X trusting the others
(possibly because he believes that they worry
about the social authority and its possible sanctions), and
X doing something pro-collectivity
just because he worries about sanctions, not because he trusts the others.
Furthermore, it is wrong to assume that trust coincides with cooperation in these kinds
of social dilemmas, and it is misleading to propose that trust consists in betting on some
reciprocation or symmetric behavior. Here Yamagishi is clearly influenced by economists and
their mental framework (see Chapter 8). As we will explain, trust also operates in completely
different social situations.
Trust is not the feeling and disposition of the 'helper', but rather of the 'receiver' of some
expected contribution to one's own actions and goals. Trust is the feeling of the helper only if
the help (goal-adoption) is
instrumental
to triggering some action by the other (for example,
some reciprocation). In this case,
X
is cooperating towards
Y
and trusting
Y
, but only because
he is expecting something from
Y
. More precisely, the claim of interest for the economists is
that
X is 'cooperating' because he is trusting
(in view of some reciprocation); he wouldn't
cooperate without such a trust in
Y
.
11
=
10
Calling this behavior “trust behavior” is rather problematic for other reasons: it can be a behavior just relying in
fact on the others' concurrent behavior, but unconsciously, without any awareness of 'cooperation'; as is the case -
for a large majority of people - with paying taxes.
11
In other words here we have a
double
and
symmetric
structure (at least in
X
mind) of goal-adoption and reliance
(see later).
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