That trusting someone and acting on that trust are different is trivially evident. For example, I may trust you in various ways but never have reason to act on that trust. Against this distinction, Jane Mansbridge (1999) argues for “altruistic trust,” which implicitly runs trust into action. To speak of altruistic trust is implicitly to say that it is not trust, that one acts cooperatively beyond what one would do if one acted only from the degree of trust one had in another. One acts altruistically despite lack of sufficient trust to justify the action. Hence to speak of altruistic trust is to make trust a term of action rather than of knowledge.

DEFINE: Distinguishes trust as epistemic (a form of knowledge) from altruistic action that exceeds one's actual degree of trust.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 302