Such an operation can – in extreme but imaginable situations – result from purely internal conditions, and lead to a form of pathological trust regardless of partners, situations and circumstances. Generally speaking, however, the truster seeks in his subjective image of the world some objective clues about whether or not trust is justified. Without any previous information trust would be nearly impossible. Trust exceeds on information; it rests on the truster being already au fait with certain general features, being already informed, even if incompletely and unreliably.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 170