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IPS169 Markku L.
Goel et al. (2005, 203) mentions three harmful consequences from “overtrust”:
leniency in judging the trustee, delay in perceiving exploitation, and increased
risk-taking. This type of overtrust or “unwarranted trust” (Warren 1999)
typically corresponds to a situation in which the trustee is judged positively,
but on the basis of poor or inexistent knowledge (e.g. Balme 2003). This can
take the form of a blind “trust in numbers”, yet the question is more complex
than merely one of lacking knowledge. Especially composite indicators tend
to hide essential choices and value judgements behind ostensibly objective
and value-free data, thus concealing the complex calculations employed to
arrive at the final numbers. In the words of Barré (2019, 3), STI indicators have,
in some cases turned from tools informing and enlightening decision-making
to ”ignorance producing devices” that – by virtue of the lock-ins and
irreversibilities produced by their institutionalisation and ‘taken-for-
grantedness’ – do not express what they pretend to, and may even resist new
knowledge gained over the years on the topic in question.
Also social trust can be detrimental to the common good. ‘Bonding social
capital’ – which characterises particularised social trust – can feed exclusion,
homogeneous social networks, specific norms of reciprocity (Santaoja et al.
2016; Putnam, 2000, 19-21), groupthink, the exclusion of different yet
competent others (Kujala et al. 2016, 702), and creation of sharp boundaries
between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ (van Deth & Zmerli, 2010). The tight social
ties within the “indicator industry” (Hezri & Hasan 2004) – or the often highly
homogeneous community of indicator users and producers (e.g. Sébastien &
Bauler 2013) – constitute an example. The greater the internal cohesion within
an indicator community, the less likely it is to explore perspectives from
outside the community, and foster the emergence of a more reflexive indicator
culture (cf. Bhuta et al. 2018) in the spirit of opening up (Stirling 2008; Ràfols
et al. 2012). Excessive trust can undermine the attempts towards inclusive
deliberation (e.g. Jasanoff & Stimmer 2017) also because trustful citizens may
lack the motivation to participate, preferring instead to delegate power to
trusted experts and institutions (Parkins & Mitchell 2005, 536).

4. Sources of trust and mistrust
Perceptions of competence and sincerity are often described as they key
characteristics that shape social and institutional trust. The competence of
statistical authorities is seldom at stake, and hardly a reason for current-day
concerns about post-truth and loss of trust in expertise and authority. By
contrast, the loss of the naïve belief in sincerity is what underpins a lot of these
concerns. Again, what has come under attack is less the sincerity of individual
statisticians and indicator creators than the purposes for which indicators are
being produced (e.g. increasing control as part of New Public Management,
private-sector profit-seeking), and the worldviews and democratic choices

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