Experiences of trust and distrust in intercultural encounters
Experiences of trust and distrust in intercultural encounters

Summary/Abstract: Objectives. This study focuses on narrated experiences of trust and distrust of 6 immigrants. It seeks to understand the participants’ viewpoints on how intercultural communication creates trust and mistrust.Material and methods. Between March 2013 and December 2013 I conducted qualitative interviews, face-to-face and through email, with 6 Romanians living in the U.S. The initial interviews lasted half an hour. Follow-up questions, additional interviews, and observations over a period of 6 months provided a fuller picture of the participants’ views on trust and mistrust. The interview was semi-structured. The common questions asked of all participants were demographic background questions and open-ended questions, such as: How did you get to trust people from different ethnic backgrounds? All the other questions flowed naturally from the discussion during the interview.Results. Several themes emerged from the participants’ narratives: trust as an inner experience, trust as a commodity, and trust as a socially acceptable image. The results are interpreted through the lenses of intercultural communication concepts: individualism-collectivism, high-context - low-context cultures, ethnocentrism, stranger, and acculturation.Conclusions. This study is a qualitative attempt at understanding the inner and communicated experiences of trust when we interact with dissimilar others. It adds to the literature of trust and intercultural communication by showing that trust is a socially constructed experience, whose interpretation can be changed by communication. Future studies should continue to explore the experiences of immigrants and the interplay of trust and mistrust in communication with the host countries at the group and/or family level.

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