Part I. Dissecting the Structure of Distrust (Episodes 1-5)

① Distrust is Learned, Not an Emotion

② The Emergence of a Society of Confirmation Bias

③ Policies as Risk Factors, Not Stabilizers

④ Five Signs of a Distrustful Society

⑤ The Solution: Not Restoring Trust, but Managing Distrust

Distrust is often explained as a matter of emotion. Words like anger, cynicism, and political inclination are invoked. However, this explanation alone makes it difficult to account for why distrust is so widespread today and why it persists for so long.

Emotions change with circumstances, but distrust accumulates over time.

People do not suddenly stop trusting the government one day. An entire society does not fall into distrust due to one or two policy failures.

Distrust is learned through repeated experiences.

When unexplained decisions, failures without accountability, and uncorrected policies accumulate, distrust becomes not an emotion but a rational choice.

The issue is not the success or failure of policies themselves.

Policies can fail at any time. The core issue is what happens *after* the failure.

When explanations are not provided as to why such a judgment was made, what other options existed, and who is responsible for the outcome, society remembers the absence of explanation longer than the failure itself.

As these memories stack up, people's behavior changes.

They doubt the outcome before asking about the policy's intention, and they calculate risks before trusting promises. At this point, distrust becomes not an emotional reaction but a learned survival strategy.

The phrase "policy fatigue society" is often used, but it is inaccurate.

People are not fatigued by policies themselves. They are fatigued by the experience of policies repeatedly appearing without explanation and disappearing without any clear assignment of responsibility.

When people don't know *why* something changed, rather than *what* changed, policies are perceived not as stabilizers but as risk factors.

At this stage, distrust is not an irrational attitude. Rather, it is rational in light of previous experiences.

Unexplained changes are risky, and decisions without accountability are likely to be repeated. Distrust is not an outburst of emotion but a prediction based on experience.

The problem is that this learning does not stop at the individual level.

Distrust gradually becomes a social language. The phrase "I can't trust it" is not an expression of anger but is used as a kind of warning. As this warning is shared, suspicion becomes the default rather than the exception.

In a society where suspicion is presupposed, the way explanations are given also changes.

Persuasion decreases, and defensive explanations increase. There are more statements listing circumstances than words taking responsibility. As a result, society increasingly moves toward a structure that does not demand justification for decisions.

Distrust is created in this way.

It is not due to someone's malice or incitement. It is the result of repeated experiences teaching the entire society in the same direction.

Before saying that trust has disappeared, we must first reflect on what has made people feel that it is safer not to trust.

The starting point of a distrustful society is not anger. It is the accumulation of unexplained choices.

Distrust is not an emotional problem, but the result of learning from experience. As this learning is repeated, society operates on the basis of suspicion, not belief.

In the next episode, ② The Emergence of a Society of Confirmation Bias, we will examine the process by which distrust solidifies into a society-wide cognitive structure, that is, the mechanism by which confirmation bias becomes entrenched as a social structure.

Reporter Kim Young