Chance first impressions set the criteria that later shift trust to distrust.

Evidence

Since in most cases the objective situation contains features to which both attitudes could be fixed, what is more decisive than anything is an indeterminate preconception about the selective tendency and the direction of symbolic fixing – often the result of a chance first impression. It picks out the critical variables, the evidence which counts, and, with these, also defines the criteria whose variation in the objective situation takes on the character of a threshold experience and suggests the change from trust to distrust or vice versa. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 274

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does Luhmann hold that the same objective situation can legitimize either trust or distrust, making the initial framing decisive?

Related

• Distrust arises from inconsistency or symbolic discrediting of trust (similarity 0.84)
• Trust thresholds are historically contingent, not natural or objective (similarity 0.84)
• Trust structures may later givver way to simple confidence (similarity 0.83)
• Excess knowledge that trust is being built can itself collapse it into distrust (similarity 0.82)
• Trust breaks down both from ignorance and from awareness that trust-building is being attempted (similarity 0.81)
• Trust, though biologically inherited in its optimism, stays subject to correction by experience. (similarity 0.81)
• Conditional trust can be rationally adopted even among egoists without social ties (similarity 0.81)
• Misplaced trust costs far more than forgone trust, making distrust come more quickly (similarity 0.81)
• Missing confidence saps diffuse sentiment while missing trust blocks decisive action. (similarity 0.81)
• Trust and distrust shift asymmetrically across behavioral thresholds (similarity 0.81)
• Trust and distrust both reduce uncertainty but shape action differently (similarity 0.81)
• Only encapsulated-interest accounts ground trust in prior trustworthiness judgments (similarity 0.80)
• Trust requires some prior information and cannot arise from nothing (similarity 0.80)
• Experience-based trust in trifling risks does not scale up to high-stakes trust (similarity 0.80)
• Distrust is often the rational default even in good relationships (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Excess knowledge that trust is being built can itself collapse it into distrust #expands (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 196
• Distrust arises from inconsistency or symbolic discrediting of trust #expands (0.55) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 268