Trust is in the cognitive category with knowledge and belief. To say I trust you in some way is to say nothing more than that I know or believe certain things about you—generally things about your incentives or other reasons to live up to my trust, to be trustworthy to me. My assessment of your trustworthiness in a particular context is simply my trust of you. The declarations “I believe you are trustworthy” and “I trust you” are equivalent. If it is cognitive, it follows that trust is not purposive (Baier 1986, 235). I do not trust you in order to gain from interacting with you. Rather, because I do trust you, I can expect to gain from interacting with you if a relevant opportunity arises. Moreover, if trust is cognitive, it is not behavioral. I may act from my trust, and my action may give evidence of my trust, but my action is not itself the trust, although it may be compelling evidence of my trust. If I trust you, I trust you right now and not only in some moment in which I act on my trust by taking a risk on you.

XREF: Contrasts with decision-theoretic accounts of trust as calculated risk-taking, and with behavioral economics models where trust is inferred from costly actions.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 98