ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a heuristic that allows the user to economize on trust and control in a multi-trustee setting. In psychology, the word “heuristics” is used to refer to imperfect decision making where the decider is subject to bounded rationality. The cost of establishing cooperation would have to be considered in a heuristic capturing trust and control. The “cost of governance” as described up to may exceed the original cooperation gains so that particular instances of cooperation may no longer be mutually advantageous. While competition can foster high performance in some trustees, the same degree of competition may drive other trustees into cheating or exiting from cooperation. In any trust game, for every strategy available to the trustor, the trustee faces a temptation of a certain magnitude. The extended trust sentence gains explanatory power when adopting the understanding that degrees of (dis)trustworthiness are specific characteristics of the trustee.
