Trust: Face to Face

This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section explores how actors can acquire a signal of inherent credibility as to another’s trustworthiness in face-to-face interaction. The chapter highlights the fragility of trust when it develops between two ‘rational egoists’ because of the ever-present possibility that one or both might defect if the context changes to incentivize opportunistic behaviour. The second section of the chapter identifies how a different form of trust can develop through face-to-face interaction, and the process of bonding and identity transformation that this makes possible. Trust as suspension is not based on risk calculation, as in the calculative approach to trust. It is suspension that provides the greatest possibility of accurate signal interpretation. The chapter also considers the observable implications of the causal mechanism that generates trust as suspension through face-to-face interaction.