Wariness can trap people in less trustworthy relationships, reinforcing distrust

Evidence

The failure of early investment by my parents and others need not correlate with the untrustworthiness of my associates in later life, but it might. The very fact that I have a hard time trusting even those who would turn out to be trustworthy may mean I fail to establish ongoing cooperative relations with such people and therefore disproportionately face short-term relations with people who, on average, are less trustworthy, thus reinforcing my attitude of distrust or wariness. Trusters and the trustworthy may interact chiefly with each — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 547

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Distrust is self-reinforcing because it selects for untrustworthy partners (similarity 0.93)
• Misplaced trust costs far more than forgone trust, making distrust come more quickly (similarity 0.85)
• Optimism about others’ trustworthiness is self-reinforcing through gained experience (similarity 0.84)
• Learned distrust is harder to unlearn and blocks success more than learned trust (similarity 0.82)
• Suspicion of others’ trustworthiness is inherently well grounded (similarity 0.82)
• Distrust needs less information than trust to form. (similarity 0.82)
• Distrust is a self-reinforcing, self-fulfilling social dynamic. (similarity 0.81)
• Distrust is self-fulfilling and cannot be invalidated by experience (similarity 0.81)
• Initial trust levels create self-reinforcing spirals of cooperation or distrust (similarity 0.81)
• Withholding trust feeds a self-reinforcing spiral of lost rational capacity. (similarity 0.81)
• Trustworthiness persists only while future gains from the relationship outweigh defection (similarity 0.81)
• Self-identity depends on the trustworthy company of equals (similarity 0.80)
• Distrust is often the rational default even in good relationships (similarity 0.80)
• Trust, though biologically inherited in its optimism, stays subject to correction by experience. (similarity 0.80)
• Poverty-driven trust in family can produce active distrust of all outsiders. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Distrust is a self-reinforcing, self-fulfilling social dynamic. #corroborates (0.92) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 273
• Self-fulfilling distrust becomes individually rational and resistant to disproof #expands (0.90) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2863
• Distrust is self-reinforcing because it starves itself of corrective information #expands (0.88) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 984