Distrust [antikvár]

Chapter 1Distrust: Manifestations and ManagementRussell HardinMost of the contributions to this book assume, either explicitly or implicitly, that trust is cognitive, that it is de facto an assessment of the trustworthiness of the potentially trusted person or group or institution. If, on your own knowledge, I seem to be trustworthy to some degree with respect to some matter, then you trust me with respect to that matter. Similarly, if I seem to be untrustworthy, then you distrust me. If trust has grounds of particular kinds, we may expect distrust to have correlative grounds. Moreover, distrust is, like trust, a three-part relation: A distrusts B with respect to X. A might trust B on many matters but not on others. Like trust, distrust is also a matter of degree. I may distrust Ruth on some matter more than I distrust George. Finally, far more than could be true of trust, I might distrust a large number of people with respect to virtually everything. I typically would not trust many, if any, people with respect to virtually everything. It is sometimes important to recognize this asymmetry, not only for groups (as addressed in chapters 6, 8, and 12) but also for institutions and government (as in chapters 2,3,8,10,11, and 13).One might think of distrust as the complement of trust, so that if I do not trust you with respect to something, I distrust you. Here distrust is commonly treated, most explicitly in chapter 3, by Edna Ullmarm-Margalit, rather as the negative of trust with a somewhat neutral state in between. If I trust you, I have specific grounds for the trust. In parallel, if I distrust you, I have specific grounds for the distrust. I could be in a state of such ignorance about you, however, that I neither trust nor distrust you. I may therefore be wary of you until I have better information