Socio-Cognitive Model of Trust: Basic Ingredients - Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational Model - page 60

2.6.1 Trust That and Trust in
As we have seen, both analyzing the fulfillment belief and the attributional nature of trust, there
are two notions of trust which are orthogonal to the other fundamental distinction between
trust as mere attitude (beliefs) and trust as decision and action. We refer to the distinction
between Trust that and Trust in .
Trust that is our trust in a given desired state of the world, event, outcome; while Trust in is
the trust in a given agent for doing something: in sentences like 'I trust John (for that/doing
that)', 'I have/feel/put trust in John (for that/doing that)', 'I entrust John within that', etc.).
Necessary and systematic relationships have emerged between these two forms of trust: they
imply each other.
On the one side, Trust in Y (both as an evaluation and potential expectation and decision, and
as an actual decision and action) necessarily entails the Trust that the action will be performed,
and -thus - the trust that p will be true, the goal g X will be realized. In other words, the 'Trust
in Y ' is just the trust that Y will 'bring it about that p '.
Even more analytically: the trust in Y 's qualities: competence, willingness, etc. entails the
trust in Y as for doing α , which entails that α will be correctly performed, which entails that

the goal will be realized ( p will be true).
But, on the other hand, as we said, any trust that a given event will happen, as trust, is more
than a mere, quite firm and positive expectation, not only because X counts on this (she is
betting on this for achieving something) but because it is based on the idea of some (although
vague) active process realizing that result.
Any Trust that presupposes some Trust in some natural or social agent .Any' Trust that p
will be true' (not just hope, not simply an expectation) presupposes a trust that some Y will
bring it about that p .
An interesting example is Lula (the president of Brazil) interviewed before the vote with
other candidates. While other candidates were saying 'I wish' 'I hope' or even 'I'm sure to
win', Lula's response was: 'I trust to win'. The difference with the other sentences is not only
about the degree of certainty ('hope' and 'wish' are weaker or less specified) or about the
positive expectation ('sure' has a high degree but might also be negative); the difference is
that while saying 'I trust that the result will be this' Lula is implicitly saying: 'I trust people,
the voters' 'I trust my party', 'I trust myself as for being able to convince and attract'.
If I conceptualize the relation as 'trust', I implicitly assume that the result depends on some
entity or process (some agency ) and the trust is 'in' such an entity, which (I trust that) will
bring about that p . So we can introduce a new operator TRUST-That , with just two explicit
arguments ( X and p ) and show how it can be translated in the former TRUST operator:

TRUST - that ( Xp ) implies TRUST ( XYC τ gx ) (2.2)

where X believes that there is any active Y (maybe he is unknown to X ) that will bring it
about that p through a behavior/action/task (maybe they are unknown to X too). In any case,
X trusting the final achievement p , trusts also the agent performing the task.
We claim that this is true even with natural agents, in sentences like: 'I trust that it will rain';
there is something more than in 'I'm sure that

.'; there is an implicit trust
in some vague causal process that will produce the result 'it will rain'. On the other hand, as

... ', 'I hope that ...