“Without Trust You Cannot Resist”. Trust as a Complexity Reduction Tool for Social Sustainability

The concept of trust holds a major place in the history of sociological thought. Trust has been attributed multiple meanings resulting from the growing awareness of its importance within contemporary society, characterised by extreme complexity and uncertainty, in which the actor has bounded rationality. It has a positive meaning that arises and develops in an environment that is anything but positive. This proposal will attempt to show the interconnections between trust and social sustainability, intended as a set of actions to ensure high levels of wellbeing for all citizens (including future generations) by fostering social equity, cooperation, valorisation of diversity, social justice, and safe￾guard of rights. We submit an extensive empirical sociological study carried out at the Department of Human Sciences of the University of L’Aquila between December 2022 and January 2024. It reports a qualitative research study cover￾ing the entire Italian national territory, with more than 100 focused interviews with significant respondents. It investigates the topic of trust on four main areas: trust in oneself, interpersonal trust, systemic trust (institutions and organisations) and trust in the future, both personal and of Italian and global society in the next 10 years. The study investigates, in several areas, the meaning of self-confidence and trust in others, empathy, cooperation, resorting to general thematization and specific biographical episodes. It is evident that trust is central not only to social interaction, but especially to ‘tighten’ the social fabric: society would disintegrate if trust was not stronger than logical and ocular verification.