But she may also be a landlord, a creditor, an employee at a potentially hazardous manufacturing plant, or an employer enrolling her workforce in a health-care organization. Promisors build and protect their reputations for trustworthiness, sensing the truth in the saying, Time wounds all heels. Over time, an individual truster who has frequent positive dealings with a promisor has some grounds for trust and will probably become a loyal customer. On the other hand, the truster may learn that a treatment was inappropriate, and the wrongdoer may lose her business. But a heelish promisor must fear that time will wound him even when dealing with an infrequent truster.
Trusters share their experience with family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
In this manner, a negative experience even if infrequent takes on extended life. When someone with experience advises us on the trustworthiness of a promisor, he or she functions as a knower for us. In every area of life the family, the church, the social club, the neighborhood, the workplace, the marketplace we are embedded in a constellation of extended dealings, or a reputational nexus. Our social linkages, including all our chatting, create a variety of nexuses that hang together to form one vast netting. Trust depends on the thickness and the pattern of the links.