信任、情感与社会结构

Trust,Emotion and Social Structure

信任之于个人生活与社会存在的重要性不言而喻,但已有研究似乎并未能使我们更真切地理解信任本身。通过批判性反思以往经验研究概念化信任的不同进路及其弊端,本文发现信任绝不只是一种基于结果预测、利益计算或理性选择的认知判断现象,而是一种有其认知、情感与行动维度的社会事实,它本质上就是一种社会情感。与此相对应,所谓信任危机的实质也绝不只是人们从理性计算或认知判断而来的普遍的彼此互不放心,而是一种充斥于全社会的存在性焦虑或恐惧。这种焦虑或恐惧的根源,在于不恰当的社会结构安排、不合理的社会制度设计和不友善的社会生存氛围。因此,信任危机的治理,面对的不只是一种＂社会病态＂,更是一个＂病态社会＂。

The importance of trust in personal life and social existence is self-evident,but the available researches do not seem to enable us to more truly understand trust itself. By critical reflection on the different conceptualization approaches and their drawbacks of previous empirical studies on trust,this paper finds that trust is not merely a cognitive judgment phenomenon based on result prediction,benefit calculation or rational choice,but a social fact that has its own cognitive,behavior and emotional dimension. Trust even essentially is a social emotion. Correspondingly,the essence of the so-called crisis of trust is by no means just widespread mutual distrust that based on rational calculation or cognitive judgment,but the existential anxiety or fear which pervades all the society.The roots of such anxiety or fear are inappropriate social structure arrangement,irrational social institution design and unfriendly social existential atmosphere,so the governance of the crisis of trust is not only to deal with a ‘social ill’,but a‘sick society’.