The correct way to see the role of thick relationships, however, is as one possible source of knowledge for the truster about the trustworthiness of another and one possible source of incentives to the trusted to be trustworthy. The first of these is essentially an epistemological role. Obviously, however, thick relationships yield only a part of the knowledge we have of others. Our understanding should not stop with only the thick-relationship class of epistemological considerations. In practice, this class may often have priority among our sources in our face-to-face interactions, but this descriptive fact does not give it conceptual or theoretical priority.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 142