Distrust, Inc.: Interpersonal and Corporate Distrust, Ordinary and Deep

Abstract This paper offers a comprehensive account of distrust that can accommodate the main variants of distrust in terms of their targets: other individuals and different types of group agents and their members. In doing so, the paper not only carves out the distinct nature of distrust vis-à-vis trust but also addresses the much-neglected issue of the aim of distrust. Against reviewing standard alternatives, I propose a novel definition of interpersonal distrust as a meta-stance on trust: Distrust is a reactive attitude to the attitude of trust, whose aim is to modulate one’s prospective reactive attitudes and prepare for the affective harm of betrayal that one would suffer if one would not have so prepared. Regarding variants of distrust, I distinguish (a) ordinary interpersonal distrust, (b) ordinary distrust towards groups and their members, and (c) “deep” distrust towards group agents that engage in dehumanization. Whereas ordinary group- and member-directed distrust can be conceptualized by a suitably specified version of the reactive attitude account, we need an altogether different account for the extreme, but rather common type of corporate distrust that involves potential dehumanization of the distruster. Here, I introduce my concept of “deep distrust” and point to its epistemic and political aims, namely to detect and alert others to looming dehumanization. I close by fathoming institutional reformist strategies to forfeit occasions for deep distrust and raise a puzzle for future research on the link between distrust and dehumanization.