Trust thresholds are historically contingent, not natural or objective

Evidence

It is accordingly less a result of natural circumstances than of history where the thresholds and turning points lie at any given time, which events have symbolic value and accelerate or brake the process of the formation of trust or distrust. If one is to appraise how strong trust and distrust are, how strongly they are internally determined or bound to particular objects, and through which critical experiences they could be changed, one must be acquainted with the history of the system, the history of the self-presentation, the confirmation of the premises and symbols involved in the processing of experience, with defences against anxiety and means of simplification, and, moreover, with the biography of the given situation. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 275

Categorization

• XREF: Explains why Stevens’s trust in the Darlington institution could not be overturned by objective moral facts — the thresholds are set by institutional history and biographical self-presentation, not evidence.
• QUESTION: Suggests a research tool gap: Luhmann calls for a ‘phenomenological psychology of everyday behaviour’ to study trust thresholds — worth chasing what later scholars built on this.