Commonplace claims that one chooses to trust entail mistaken implications that trusting is a matter of acting. Kenneth Arrow (1974, 26) speaks of the “agreement to trust each other.” John Dunn (1988, 73, see also 80) says that trust is “a more or less consciously chosen policy for handling the freedom of other human agents or agencies.” Annette Baier (1986, 244) speaks of “conscious trust the truster has chosen to endorse and cultivate.” Luhmann (1980, 24) speaks, as do many others, including Baier (1986) and Virginia Held (1984, 65), of trust as a gamble, a risky investment. Held (1968, 158) also says that one may be obligated to trust. All of this is wrong. I just do or do not trust to some degree, depending on the evidence I have. I do not, in an immediate instance, choose to trust, I do not take any risk in trusting. Only actions are chosen—for example, to act as I would if I did in fact trust or to take a chance on your being trustworthy beyond any evidence I have that you will be trustworthy.

XREF: Contrasts with game-theoretic and rational-choice treatments of trust popular in economics and political science.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 305