The Emotional Book of Contents

Distrust (or mistrust) is a formal way of not trusting any one party too much in a situation of grave risk or deep doubt. It is commonly expressed in civics as a division or balance of powers, or in politics as means of validating treaty terms. Systems based on distrust simply divide the responsibility so that checks and balances can operate. The phrase “Trust, but verify� refers specifically to distrust.

Distrust has also been shown to increase the speed and performance of individuals and groups at certain tasks. One way to classify tasks is to split them into routine (normal, usual) and nonroutine (creative, unusual, undefined). In experiments distrust has been shown to increase performance in nonroutine tasks while decreasing performance in routine tasks. Neuroeconomics explain how economists are attempting to understand why humans trust or distrust others by recording physiological 48