Trust is a peculiar belief predicated not on evidence but on the lack of contrary evidence — a feature that (as Pagden (this volume) shows) makes it vulnerable to deliberate destruction. 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 (see my paper on the mafia, this volume). 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 (and even so, as Good argues in this volume, cognitive inertia may prevent people from changing their beliefs).

XREF: Echoes of self-fulfilling prophecy dynamics familiar in economics (Akerlof) and sociology (Merton). SEED: Potential essay angle: how self-fulfilling distrust explains persistent institutional breakdown or legacy of corruption in organizations.

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