Trust in Context: A Panel-Workshop Aimed at Uncovering the Nature of Distrust Across Fields and Developing Research-Backed Solutions

Abstract: In the United States, and around the world, trust in key democratic and societal institutions is at historic lows. The goal of this session is to bring interdisciplinary scholars together to understand sources of distrust in some of these institutions -- namely, government, healthcare, education, and law -- and develop solutions to address them. This session will consist of three parts. In Part 1, content experts and practitioners in our focal fields will discuss specific sources of distrust, and/or solutions they have observed. In Part 2, conflict management and behavioral ethics scholars will synthesize these observations by discussing the psychological frameworks that are relevant for diagnosing problems of distrust, and solutions to bolster trust. In Part 3, panelists and attendees will split into small groups by field and spend time developing new research ideas that combine the insights of conflict management with the practical challenges of working in the context of systemic distrust. Our hope is that this session will not only be timely and practically relevant, but generative for our attendees - particularly doctoral students and early career researchers - who may not yet have considered how these institutions can be a fruitful laboratory for studying ethics and conflict management.

Keywords: trust, conflict, law, medicine, politics, education