Trust matters profoundly for many dimensions of political life. In this article we focus on political trust: how the trust or mistrust citizens have toward the political process, politicians and government affects politics. Prior research has shown that political trust influences such crucial dimensions of politics as the basic legitimacy of government, political participation, voting behavior,...

Since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, there have been accusations of blatant racism in the government’s response, on the one hand, and adamant denials that race played any role at all, on the other. We propose that both perspectives reflect oversimplifications of the processes involved, and the resulting debate may obscure a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the situation. Specifically, ...

In Religion in the Making, Whitehead sets the stage for an interesting paradox that runs through his whole philosophical work. On the one hand, he defines metaphysics as clearly and succinctly as possible, namely as “the science which seeks to discover the general ideas which are indispensable to the analysis of everything that happens” (RM 84n1). On the other hand, he warns us to mistrust meta...

Financial scandals and the related increase in mistrust of investors represented in the public view through the Enron and Worldcom cases led to various legal and community driven initiatives in recent years resulting in a tighter regulation context for companies with the overall goal to regain and strengthen stakeholders’ confidence and trust. The paper at hand presents how IT can support regul...

This study examines the relationship between racial/ethnic discrimination in medical settings, distrust in conventional medicine, and attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) among a racially/ethnically diverse sample. We also investigate how this relationship differs by nativity. Data are from a 2008 statewide stratified sample of publicly insured adults in Minnesota (N=2,...

We believe that distrust can be as important as trust when agents are making a decision. An agent may not trust a source because of lack of positive evidence, but this does not necessarily mean the agent distrusts the source. Trust and distrust have to be considered as two separate concepts which can coexist. We are aware that an adequate way to take this fact into account is by considering exp...

This study examines whether some types of dispositional trust/distrust concepts are better than other types at inducing consumers to trust a Web advice provider. We propose and test a model in which dispositional trust and distrust concepts are given separate roles. This unique approach is based on the growing, but untested theoretical consensus that trust and distrust are separate concepts tha...