On the concepts of trust and assurance
Short description
There are strong reasons to believe that different actors are more willing to cooperate if they are confident that other actors will do the same, both in the voluntary and regulated cases. This confidence can have different bases. For example, in the case of voluntary collective action, trusting the other actors seems particularly important, whereas political and institutional trust seems more important in the case of regulated collective action, i.e. trusting that the relevant authorities will enforce the relevant regulations.
In our view, there is a need for conceptual analysis in this area, e.g. to distinguish between different forms and bases of trust. Toshio Yamagishi’s distinction between trust proper (e.g. where one expects the other to cooperate because of her benign intentions) and assurance (where the same expectation is based on the fact that the other has external incentives to cooperate) is but one starting point, as is the distinction between interpersonal and institutional trust (or assurance). We believe that a well-founded conceptualization of this area will give rise to better empirical studies.
Researchers (länkas till nya katalogen)
Bengt Brülde, Department of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg, Karl Persson de Fine Licht