Because I have such low expectations, however, I am willing to test very few interactions. If you had a generally good experience of the benefits from trusting, you would readily enter into far more of these interactions. It therefore would take me longer to gain enough information to recommend changing my pessimistic assessments. All the while, I also enter fewer interactions and therefore benefit less than you do as you enter many, which, on average, pay off well. If we start with similar levels of welfare, you soon outdistance me.

XREF: This is a classic trust dynamic akin to optimism/trust research and network effects — the pessimistic person gains less information to update beliefs, locking in lower trust.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 553