社会杂志

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信任的本质及其文化

  

  1. 翟学伟,南京大学社会学院心理学系
  • 出版日期:2014-01-20 发布日期:2014-01-20
  • 通讯作者: 翟学伟,南京大学社会学院心理学系 E-mail:zhaixw@nju.edu.cn
  • 基金资助:

    本文为国家社科基金重大项目“我国社会信用制度研究”(项目编号:09&ZD055)的阶段性成果。

The Essence of Trust and Its Culture

  1. ZHAI Xuewei,Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University
  • Online:2014-01-20 Published:2014-01-20
  • Contact: ZHAI Xuewei,Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University E-mail:zhaixw@nju.edu.cn
  • Supported by:

    This major project was supported by the National Social Science Fund “Research of China’s Social Credit System”(09&ZD055).

摘要: 随着信任的研究越来越受重视,信任的含义也在不同的学科领域中越来越复杂。如果回到常理及其文化中来讨论信任,它所展现出来的特征可分为无约束机制的信任和有约束机制的信任,并在文化意义上导致信任地带的位移。在中国文化中,信任是人们在社会交往发生可疑时而形成的中间地带,可细分为放心关系和信任关系及无信任关系。其划分原因源自中西文化对人性及其社会依赖性的不同假定以及它们所构成的关系网络偏向或制度性偏向。由此,信任的本质是社会成员在面对社会不确定性和复杂性增加时体现出的对自己依赖对象所维持的时空性特征。以这种框架来重新处理以往有关中国社会信任研究中的争议和困惑,很多方面的问题可以得到合理的解释。

关键词: 信任地带 , 约束机制 , 放心关系 , 关系网络 , 依赖性假设

Abstract: With more attention to the study of trust, interpreting trust in different disciplines and sciences is becoming increasingly complex, so is the controversy about it. One of the most concerned issues is the tendency of researchers to divide trust into two kinds: special trust and universal trust. The advantage of such a division is for classification so that institutions and relations, and cultures and cultural differences can be conducted empirically. However, this paper contends otherwise. The author returns to common sense and cultural backgrounds to discuss trust, suggesting that trust can be divided into trust without or with constraint mechanisms based on its expressed characteristics. Such classification can reveal cultural differences in the expression of trust which may lead to trust zone shifting in social practices. In the Chinese culture, trust is formed in the intermediate zone when suspiciousness rises in social interaction. According to the degree of suspiciousness, the trust zone can be further subdivided into ease relations, trust relations, and notrust relations. These features are evidenced in Confucian discourses and the characteristics of Chinese human relations. The author holds that this classification originates in the structural biases of trust relations coming from the assumptions of human nature and its social dependence in the Chinese and Western cultures: the former is biased toward the socialnetwork control and the latter towards institutional constraints. But in either way, the essence of trust is spacetime maintenance of the object upon whom one is dependent when social members are facing heightened social uncertainty and complexity. If this comparative research framework is used to reprocess previous studies on China’s social trust controversy and perplex, including particularism and universalism, more reasonable explanations could be found for many aspects.

Key words: trust zone , constraint mechanism , ease relations , social network ,  , dependence assumption