Can We Trust Trust

Citation: Gambetta, Diego (2000) ‘Can We Trust Trust?’, in Gambetta, Diego (ed.) Trust:

Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, electronic edition, Department of Sociology,

University of Oxford, chapter 13, pp. 213-237, <http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/papers/

gambetta213-237.pdf>.

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13

Can We Trust Trust?

Diego Gambetta

In this concluding essay I shall try to reconstruct what seem to me the central questions about

trust that the individual contributions presented in this volume raise and partly answer.1 In the

first section, I briefly qualify the claim that there is a degree of rational cooperation that should

but does not exist, and I shall give a preliminary indication of the importance of the beliefs we

hold about others, over and above the importance of the motives we may have for cooperation.

In the second section, I define trust and the general conditions under which it becomes relevant

for cooperation. In the third, I discuss the extent to which cooperation can come about

independently of trust, and also whether trust can be seen as a result rather than a precondition

of cooperation. In the final section, I address the question of whether there are rational reasons

for people to trust - and especially whether there are reasons to trust trust and, correspondingly,

distrust distrust.

I

The unqualified claim that more cooperation2 than we normally get would be desirable is

generally sterile, is often characterized by irritating <<214>> rhetorical flabbiness and, if

preached too extensively, may even have the effect of making cooperation less attractive

(Hirschman 1984a). Such a claim can be and is disputed in a variety of ways. Let us begin by

considering whether we necessarily need more cooperation, keeping, for the moment, the

distinction between cooperation and trust blurred and their relationship implicit.

‘According to the trite observation’ - Adam Smith wrote - ‘if there is any society among robbers

and murderers, they must at least … abstain from robbing and murdering one another’ (Smith

[1759] 1976: 86; see also Saint Augustine in Dunn, this volume). This ‘trite’ observation serves

a double purpose: it reminds us that basic forms of cooperation are inevitable if a society is to be

at all viable, but it also points out, perhaps unwittingly, that there are instances of cooperation -

notably those among robbers and murderers - that we may want to dispose of rather than

improve. We may want less cooperation (and trust) rather than more, especially among those

who are threatening us, and whose cooperation is a hindrance to ours. A priori, we cannot

always say whether greater trust and cooperation are in fact desirable (Schelling 1984: 211).

1 <<213>> In this essay converge not just several of the ideas which contributors have published in this volume

but also those which were patiently expressed in conversation, and thanks to which my reflections on trust were

shaped and reshaped. I am intensely grateful to all of them. Throughout the seminar, I relied constantly on the

invaluable help of Geoffrey Hawthorn. The essay also benefits from exchanges with several other people at

different stages of the seminar. In particular, I would like to express my appreciation to Luca Anderlini,

Elisabetta Galeotti, Albert Hirschman, Caroline Humphrey, Alan Macfarlane, Andy Martin, Paul Ryan, Hamid

Sabourian and Allan Silver. I am also particularly grateful to Heather Pratt for helping me to edit this volume as

well as for polishing my awkward English.

2 <<213>> In this essay ‘cooperation’ is meant in the broad sense of agents, such as individuals, firms, and

governments, agreeing on any set of rules - a ‘contract’ - which is then to be observed in the course of their

interaction (cf. Binmore and Dasgupta 1986:3). Agreements need not be the result of previous communication

but can emerge implicitly in the course of interaction itself, and rules need not be written but can be established

as a result of habit, prior successful experience, trial and error, and so on.

The problem, however, is not only that we may want less of it among our enemies, but also that

we may not want it among ourselves, at least not all the time.3 And it is not just that we may

lazily wish not to have to cooperate, but that we may wish for something else instead, notably

competition. The ideological stance which holds competition and the ‘struggle for survival’ to

be the texture of life is largely inadequate: in so far as it draws upon analogies with the animal

world for its legitimation it is quite simply wrong (Bateson 1986 and this volume; Hinde 1986)

and if taken literally there is no need to go back to Hobbes to realize that it would make social

life impossible, or at least utterly unpleasant. Yet a certain dose of competition is notoriously

beneficial in improving performance, fostering technological innovation, bettering services,

allocating resources, spreading the fittest genes to later generations, pursuing excellence,

preventing abuses of power - in short, in enriching the human lot. The rationale for this view is

that not only those who succeed in competition benefit, but that the positive influence of

competition is likely to be more generally felt.

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Even if we believe both that there are people whose cooperation we would wish to diminish and

that the arguments in favour of competition are empirically as well as theoretically valid in a

sufficiently large number of instances to make them relevant, it does not follow that, thus

qualified the claim that there is a wide variety of cases where it would be desirable to improve

cooperation is thereby invalidated. On the contrary, this claim holds in the relationships between

as well as (to differing degrees) within countries, whether socialist or capitalist, developed or

underdeveloped. The problem, stated in very general terms, seems to be one of finding the

optimal mixture of cooperation and competition rather than deciding at which extreme to

converge. Cooperation and competition are not necessarily alternatives; they can and do coexist

in both the animal and the human world. Very few people, however, would venture so far as to

claim that in the world as it is we have managed to get that balance right.

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