“The untrusting”: a sociological image of the group (research results in the Vologda oblast)

The article is devoted to the study of a group of respondents who position themselves as “the untrusting”. Actually the phenomenon of distrust in the works of domestic and foreign sociolo-gists is most often referred to as an antithesis to trust. There is no full-fledged theoretical and methodological description of distrust to date. Insufficient theoretical basis of the phenomenon of distrust does not allow to fully answer the question of what are the main characteristics of the individual «distruster», what are the features that unite people into a group of «distrusters». The article describes the possibility of empirical way to Supplement the existing theoretical knowledge, as well as to find new faces of the subject under study. The purpose of this article was to describe the distinctive characteristics of the Vologda residents, designated by us as «distrusters». The group « distrusters «is highlighted in the course of sociological research conducted by specialists of the Federal state budgetary institution of science»Vologda scientific center of the Russian Academy of Sciences». Trust is considered by scientists as a meta-relationship underlying all human relations and as a basic characteristic of the social capital existing in the territorial community. In this regard, trust served as a criterion for the allocation of social groups, conditionally designated as» trusting»,» trusting selectively»,»distrusting». The indicator of selection of groups is the choice of respondents from the spectrum of the proposed answers alternative «no one can be trusted». In accordance with the research task, the method of drawing up a sociological portrait was used. This method is often used by sociologists and psychologists to characterize different social groups in order to describe their distinctive characteristics. The algorithm of writing a sociological portrait involves the use as the main indicators of socio-demographic, behavioral, cognitive, emotional characteristics of the study group, as they reflect the most significant characteristics of any social group. On the basis of the compiled sociological portrait «distrusters» the importance and possibility of measuring distrust are shown.