Surprisingly many people have a quasi-Platonic vision of trust. They know what it is. Unfortunately, because they know it to be so many different things the concept is so plastic that we cannot even know what is at issue in many accounts that explain trust or use trust to explain some behavior. If our discussions of trust are to be understood, we must specify more narrowly how we mean to use the term. In this book, I canvass numerous claims about trust, what it is and how it works. I put forward one fairly general model of trust—trust as encapsulated interest—that seems to be what is commonly at stake in many of the interpersonal relationships we have. In particular, it fits the fact that most of our trust relationships are ongoing, not oneshot, relationships and with people we know relatively well, not with strangers.

DEFINE: The author distinguishes the plastic, quasi-Platonic lay sense of trust from a narrowly specified model: trust as encapsulated interest, applied to ongoing relationships with known persons rather than one-shot dealings with strangers.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 424