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Dialectics of social trust and distrust
Consideration of trust and distrust as relatively autonomous psychological phenomena been indicated in 50-70-ies of the XXth century in the works by M. Deutsch, G. Mellinger, B.F. Porshnev, W. Read, etc. A more simplified approach to the problem of the correlation between trust and distrust has spread later as of these phenomena were seen as contradictory, conflicting, and thus interconnected. However, in recent years, an increasing number of works that shows that the trust and distrust as psychological phenomena are largely independent from one another. The study of distrust is important due to the fact that in real social interaction the conflicts, differences in goals and values as well as in norms and rules of conduct are typical. Interaction often takes place in conditions of high uncertainty, in the absence of regulation and control capabilities. In such circumstances, the most effective form of relationship is the balance of optimal levels of trust and distrust. Similar trends of social life determine the high relevance of joint analysis of trust and distrust as relatively independent phenomena that perform specific functions in the regulation of life of the individual and the group. This joint analysis is the goal of our study. As a result of theoretical and empirical research the definition of trust and distrust as mutually exclusive phenomena of polar valence has been proved wrong. The analysis of the conditions under which individuals are capable of simultaneously trusting and not trusting each other have been implemented. Conditions of ambivalence of trust and distrust are, first, the multidimensional and dynamic relationship between people, and second, a partner in the interaction having contradictory qualities, and third, high subjective assessment of risks arising from the high trust and openness of an individual (the subject) and partner for interaction, fourth, the contradictory attitudes of the subject to a number of individual traits of a person under assessment.