TRUST AND SOCIABILITY - ON THE LIMITS OF CONFIDENCE AND ROLE EXPECTATIONS

Trust is distinguished from confidence in that the latter rests on kno wledge or predictability of the alter's actions, while trust is necess ary to maintain interaction in the absence of such knowledge. While co nfidence may have many different bases, trust is a preeminently modem phenomenon, resting, ultimately on the self-regulating, autonomous ind ividual. It emerges concomitantly with the moral privileging of the pr ivate realm and of individual conscience. Contemporary developments as sociated with late or postmodern culture and society are however calli ng into question this model of the individual and with it the potentia l for trust to exist beyond the realm of regulations and constraints. VLADIMIR ILYCH LENIN is Said to have remarked: 'Vertraun ist gut, Kont rol noch besser''-trust is good, but control is much better. In this s aying we find what I think is a distinction critical to any preliminar y understanding of trust-that is, the distinction between trust and co nfidence (control in Lenin's terms). Control or confidence is what you have when you know what to expect in a situation; trust is what you n eed to maintain interaction if you do not.(1)