Collective Trust and Normative Agents

In this paper we aim to make the notion of collective trust clear, as it is on the basis of the emergence of social and legal norms. We use a multi-modal approach which is widely accepted concerning collective attitudes. We argue that collective trust is a scalable concept and therefore definable in different levels or strengths. We define three levels: joint trust, reliance, and collective trust. On account of this analysis, we show possible connections between different forms of group trust and the emergence of obligations within groups of agents. In particular, the notion of collective trust appears to be strong enough to raise the trustee’s obligation to perform certain acts.