Those who do not share our salient values are not relied on. Most of our work has been in the context of social controversies about environmental and technological risks. We make a distinction between trust and confidence. Trust is a social emotion involving the unconscious processing of information about others directly using inherited psychological mechanisms. As with other social emotions these mechanisms represent adaptations that solved basic human problems.
Confidence is a social judgment.
We make confidence judgments when we must decide about relying on others but the situation doesn t quite match those in which our trust mechanisms evolved. In these situations we shift from the automatic processes of inherited mechanisms to the use of psychological mechanisms employing conscious thought, logical deduction, and the evaluation of evidence. Toward a Cosmopolitan Society . Social Trust and the Management of Risk. Culture, cosmopolitanism, and risk management.