Understanding the emotions is key to breaking the cycle of distrust

Annette Baier wrote that: “Trust is always an invitation not only to confidence tricksters but also to terrorists, who discern its most easily destroyed and socially vital forms. How fear and contempt generate distrust Some affective states generate or magnify trust or distrust and others tamp them down — and indeed are themselves generated, magnified, or tamped down by trust or distrust. If we accept a risk assessment account of trust and distrust that analyses them as a matter of judgment about the likelihood that the one-trusted will act as counted on — such as that by Diego Gambetta — then we will miss the powerful affective alchemy that can be at work in cases where fear and contempt are recruited to undermine trust and foster climates of distrust, which in turn further magnifies fear and contempt and so on. Counteracting fear and contempt Some affective states work on our trust and distrust by way of counteracting the emotional responses of fear and contempt that drive out trust and replace it with distrust. The “criminal schema” is designed precisely to foster both fear and contempt, and do so in a single move; thus driving out trust and replacing it with distrust.