structural:scholar_edition, structural:expansion
Philosophy

Many philosophers have written about different forms of trust. Most agree that interpersonal trust is the foundation on which these forms can be modeled. For an act to be an expression of trust, it must not betray the expectations of the trustee. Some philosophers, such as Lagerspetz, argue that trust is a kind of reliance, though not merely reliance. Gambetta argued that trust is the inherent belief that others generally have good intentions, which is the foundation for our reliance on them. Philosophers such as Annette Baier challenged this view, asserting a difference between trust and reliance by saying that trust can be betrayed, whereas reliance can only be disappointed. Carolyn McLeod explains Baier's argument with the following examples: we can rely on our clock to give the time, but we do not feel betrayed when it breaks, thus, we cannot say that we trusted it; we are not trusting when we are suspicious of another person, because this is in fact an expression of distrust. The violation of trust warrants this sense of betrayal. Thus, trust is different from reliance in the sense that a trustor accepts the risk of being betrayed.

Karen Jones proposed an emotional aspect to trust— optimism that the trustee will do the right thing by the trustor, which is also described as "affective trust". People sometimes trust others even without this optimistic expectation, instead hoping that by extending trust this will prompt trustworthy behavior in the trustee. This is known as "therapeutic trust" and gives both the trustee a reason to be trustworthy, and the trustor a reason to believe they are trustworthy.

The definition of trust as a belief in something or a confident expectation about something eliminates the notion of risk because it does not include whether the expectation or belief is favorable or unfavorable. For example, to expect a friend to arrive to dinner late because she has habitually arrived late for the last fifteen years is a confident expectation (whether or not we find her late arrivals to be annoying). The trust is not about what we wish for, but rather it is in the consistency of the data. As a result, there is no risk or sense of betrayal because the data exists as collective knowledge. Faulkner contrasts such "predictive trust" with the aforementioned affective trust, proposing that predictive trust may only warrant disappointment as a consequence of an inaccurate prediction, not a sense of betrayal.