People’s Responses to Risky Uncertainty and the Confidence-Trust-Nexus
Jens O. Zinn (University of Melbourne)
30 January 2025
With the Ukrainian war, the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change related extreme weather events Germany shifted to crisis mode.* With decision-making pressure increasing, reliable knowledge became crucial while conspiracy theories and misinformation were flooding the public sphere. In this situation, scientific expertise was an important resource for societal decision makers and the public alike. However, when people make sense of and respond to risky uncertainty in everyday life, expert advice competes with other modes of reasoning. Utilising New Phenomenology, the presentation suggests that non-rational and in-between modes complement rational reasoning. These modes are rooted in different forms of knowledge such as scientific knowledge, embodied knowledge and shared belief systems but differ in their pervasiveness. On this basis the presentation concludes with systematising different forms of trusting such as critical trust, unconditional trust, and confidence to make sense of people’s susceptibility to different forms of claims making in the public sphere.
* In 2023 the Society for German Language chose “Krisenmodus” as Word of the Year.
