Calibrating Trust to Behavior
Trust as calibrated, revisable, bidirectional cooperative currency — proportioned to demonstrated behavior rather than to identity.
Category ArchitectureRead the deeper structure of this category.Tools
5 Tools01
Good Faith as Default
The opening posture that treats ambiguous behavior as coming from a rational person before treating it as hostility, while keeping the posture accountable to what follows.
02
Graduated Reciprocity
Building cooperation through small, observable, reciprocated moves, then expanding trust only as behavior warrants the next level of exposure.
03
Skin in the Game
The trust diagnostic that reads whether authority, advice, claims, and decisions are matched by exposure to consequences.
04
Trust Diagnostics
A practical diagnostic for whether trust is warranted in this domain, at this level of exposure, with this person, group, institution, or system.
05
Trust Thermocline
The diagnostic for trust that erodes gradually beneath the visible surface, then collapses suddenly after one more breach crosses an accumulated threshold.