Deliberate Trust and Intuitive Faith: A Dual-Process Model of Reliance

Drawing on the dual process framework from social and cognitive psychology, this paper reconciles two distinct conceptualizations of trust prevalent in the literature: rational calculative and irrational affective or normative. After critically reviewing previous attempts at reconciliation between these distinctions, we argue that the notion of trust as reliance is the higher order category of which deliberate trust and intuitive faith are subtypes. Our revised approach problematizes the conflation of epistemic uncertainty with phenomenological uncertainty while providing sound footing for a key sociological insight: that reliance on the routine social order is both the cognitive default and based on substantial practical evidence. We develop two broad suggestions for future research from these implications: (1) sociological research should examine the role of intuitive faithas opposed to deliberate trustin late modern societies, and (2) analysts should challenge the role of deliberate trust as the modal form of reliance in contemporary research.