The experience of public distrust towards science-based risk assessments and regulatory proposals have resulted in proposals for context-sensitive risk communication, transparency in decision processes, public inclusion in regulatory work and new contracts between science and citizens. This is the point of departure for this study; however, rather than focusing on strategies to achieve public trust, this study focuses on the very meaning of trust, that is, its prerequisites and character. By drawing on recent discussions in science and technology studies and social psychology, a perspective is elaborated upon that concerns the relational and emotional characteristics of trust. It is argued that trust is a modality of action motivated by the ego’s emotional apprehension of a certain form of double-confidence, that is, the ego’s confidence in the outer world or the future actions of the alter ego and the ego’s confidence in its own understanding and judgment of the outer world or the alter ego. This means that trust does not develop through information and the uptake of knowledge but through active involvement and sense-making.