In contrast, deep distrust is very difficult to invalidate through experience, for either it prevents people from engaging in the appropriate kind of social experiment or, worse, it leads to behaviour which bolsters the validity of distrust itself … Once distrust has set in it soon becomes impossible to know if it was ever in fact justified, for it has the capacity to be self-fulfilling, to generate a reality consistent with itself. It then becomes individually ‘rational’ to behave accordingly, even for those previously prepared to act on more optimistic expectations … Only accident or a third party may set up the right kind of ‘experiment’ to prove distrust unfounded

DEFINE: Explains the mechanism by which distrust becomes self-fulfilling: it prevents the very experiments that could disconfirm it. SEED: Could ground an essay on how epistemic self-fulfilling prophecies create traps in relationships, organizations, or politics.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 2863