Toward A Multiscale Account of Trust

Trust is necessary for the survival of most living beings. Accounts of trust are largely confined to the individual, human scale, limiting our ability to model trust as a coordinating mechanism of the natural world. We outline an account of trust applicable to human and non-human agents, at individual and collective scales. It defines trust as a wager on the predictability, compatibility and benevolence of other agents, arising to mitigate allostatic uncertainties inherent in coordination. Successful trust saves energy otherwise spent on monitoring, verification, and control. Trusting relationships mediate the formation of collectives, expanding the knowledge and agency of trustees. Trust mechanisms encourage increased interdependence and specialization within collectives, facilitating their coalescence into agents at new scales of complexity. Trust may even emerge between different scales of organization, such as between individuals and institutions, and hence any agent’s coordinated behavior may rely on trust within their component subsystems. Trust is predicated on the risk of betrayal, making the successful allocation of trust and distrust critical, perhaps explaining the myriad genetic, developmental and cultural mechanisms to gauge trustworthiness. We novelly formulate an account of trust that synthesizes its allostatic, phenomenological and informational properties at multiple scales. It suggests work in cognitive science, biology, and anthropology that could improve our understanding of phenomena ranging from mutualism and social cohesion, to dissociation and societal fracturing. A multiscale study of trust may reveal and help prevent the means by which the breakdown of trust causes living systems like human society to fracture or collapse.