Keywords: group mentality, interpersonal trust, service professional groups
The article focuses on the relationship between general interpersonal trust and trust in a specific social group. This part of the research is based on the Japanese scientist Yamagushi’s theory of the existence of a general degree of interpersonal trust and on the English sociologist Giddens’ theory that there exist various levels of trust in society, and that these are to a certain extent ordered hierarchically, according to how universal or how “face-to-face” a particular actor is with the object of trust. Here, “facework commitments” refer to relationships in which the actor encounters another actor face to face, while “faceless commitments” indicate the relationship of the actor to various social groups, organisations, and institutions. According to Giddens, the fundamental points for building faceless commitments are where an actor encounters representatives of a social group or institution, i.e. “access points”, which represent a key moment in establishing a relationship of trust or distrust. On the basis of these theories and using the data from the “Aktér” 2001 and 2003 studies the degree of trust among people toward selected professional groups in the services was examined (maintenance workers, marketers, restaurant service employees, dealers) along with how this in turn related to the general level of interpersonal trust.
