To the extent that this reflexivity becomes conscious, personal trust too becomes a variant of system trust. Only trust in the capacity for self-presentation to be reflected contains a guarantee for suitable continuity of behaviour under difficult, changing conditions. Only this form of trust regards the other person as truly free – and not merely as a being with certain constant characteristics. Only this form of trust can make itself conscious of the function of trust, the function of the reduction of complexity in the face of the freedom of the other person, and in this awareness find an orientation.

DEFINE: The highlight distinguishes naive personal trust from its conscious, reflexively aware variant, which works like system trust by reducing complexity in the face of another's freedom.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 239