Discussing trust and resilience: The need for a healthy dose of distrust

Abstract

AbstractHow are trust and reslience related? There is a lack of conceptual discussions. This paper analyzes trust and resilience with respect to the system of critical infrastructures and engineers working on critical infrastructure resilience. The results are three findings based on the assumption that resilience and trust are mechanisms to cope with complexity and uncertainty inherent to modern societies and critical infrastructures. First, they are no functional alternatives. Trust is an everyday process where favorable expectations help to act “as if” uncertainty was successfully resolved. Resilience helps to cope in “what if” cases when disaster strikes. Second, resembling the risk perception paradox, too much trust in critical infrastructures might lead to complacency, decreasing individual coping capacities and subsequently resilience. People need a healthy dose of distrust—distrust being a functional alternative to trust and not its opposite—to be aware that a disruption might happen and prepare for it. Third, notwithstanding the difficulties of uncertainty communication, engineers need to communicate limits to knowledge resulting from complexity transparently. This might decrease trust in specific solutions, but could sustain overall system trust, because it helps to adjust favorable expectations.