Distrust needs less information than trust to form.

Evidence

Distrust comes easily because it can be built on a limited bit of behavior by the distrusted. Trust, however, requires too rich an understanding of the other’s incentives for it to come easily to many people. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 438

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hardin’s trust-as-encapsulated-interest theme and to the reader’s synthesis of Saramago’s Blindness where a single suspected betrayal destroys cooperation.