The development, escalation and collapse of system trust: From the financial crisis to society at large

This theoretical outline sketches the development, escalation and collapse of trust in expert systems, using the recent financial crisis as an example, but aiming at the description of broader underlying mechanisms. After reviewing the literature on the genesis of system trust, it identifies spirals of system trust that escalate both “vertically” (actors placing too much trust in the system) and “horizontally” (wider and wider circles of actors placing trust in the system). Both the apparent stability and the potential for collapse inherent in these spirals results from the fact that system trust is typically more distant, and consequently lacks some of the safeguards present in interpersonal trust. Ironically, thus, attempts to eliminate the influence of trust by introducing impersonal rule systems may increase rather than reduce the risk posed to systemic stability.