Definitions of Trust: From Conceptual Components to the General Core - Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational Model - page 20

1.5.6 Trust as Based on Reciprocity
There is another important and recent family of definitions of trust, in which trust denotes
a behavior based on an expectation (a view that we share), but both the behavior and the
expectation are defined in a very restricted way. Let us take as the prototype of this approach
the definition of trust provided by Elinor Omstrom and James Walker in their topic Trust and
Reciprocity (Omstrom and Walker, 2003): they define trust as 'the willingness to take some
risk in relation to other individuals on the expectation that the others will reciprocate' (p. 382).
This view in fact restricts the act of trusting to the act of 'cooperating', contributing, sustaining
some cost in view of a future advantage that depends, in a strategic framework, also on the
other's conduct; and it restricts the expectation to the expectation of reciprocation. By doing
so, they exclude from the very notion and from the relations of trust all those cases that are
not based at all on some exchange or cooperation; where X just counts on Y 's adoption of
her goals, even in an asymmetric relationship, like in a son-mother relation, or in a request
for help. We will extensively discuss these views in Chapter 8 about the notion of trust in
economics and game theory.
1.5.7 Hardin: Trust as Encapsulated Interest
In Russell Hardin's view (Hardin, 2002), in part based on Baier's theory (Baier, 1986)):
'I trust you because I think it is in your interest to take my interests in the relevant matter seriously'.
This is the view of trust as encapsulated interest . I believe that you will take care of
my interests, but I also believe that you will be rational, i.e. you will just follow your own
interests; on such a basis I predict your favorable behavior: 'Any expectations I have are
grounded in an understanding (perhaps mistaken) of your interests specifically with respect to
me'. Expectations are not enough: 'The expectation must be grounded in the trustee's concern
with the trustor's interests' 15 .
With this very interesting notion of 'embedded interests', Hardin arrives close to capturing
the crucial phenomenon of social goal-adoption , which really is foundational for any form
of pro-sociality: from exchange to cooperation, from altruism to taking care of, and so on
(Castelfranchi, 1989), (Conte and Castelfranchi, 1995), (Castelfranchi, 1998). In our vocabu-
lary the fact 'that you encapsulate my interests in your own interests' means that you adopt
my goals (for some reason of yours). Social goal-adoption is precisely the idea that another
agent takes into account in his mind my goals (needs, desires, interests, projects, etc.), in order
to satisfy them; he 'adopts' them as goals of himself, since he is an autonomous agent, i.e.
self-driven and self-motivated (which does not necessarily mean being 'selfish'!), and he is
not a hetero-directed agent, so that he can only act in view of and be driven by some internal
purposive representation. Therefore, if such an internally represented (i.e. adopted) goal will
be preferred to others, then he will happen to be self-regulated by my goal; for some motive
of his own, he will act in order to realize my goal.
15 See note 14.