Study On The Public Trust In Science And Technology

With rapid development of science and technology, people’s attitude toward it has changed, since industrial revolution. On one hand, with science and technology permeating our life, the mass increasingly rely on it, trust or even worship. On the other hand, because of its negative effects, people’s attitude change from trust and worship into doubt or even distrust.Starting from the concept of trust, this thesis demonstrates different definitions of trust by classical authors and discriminate related notion such as faith and credit. Then it analyses trust relationship between the mass and science and technology, points out science and technology trust is prolongation of interpersonal trust, belonging to system trust, and analyses systematically the main factors that influence science and technology trust, including cognization, emotion and experience. On such a basis, it reflects people’s attitude toward science and technology, from trust to worship and distrust, and points out the relationship between this change and scientism. Taking nanotechnology as an example, it analyses, with an empirical research method, the mass trust to science and technology and its disseminative approaches, advertisements on science and technology, meanwhile points out that the popularization and public participation of science and technology is necessary to reestablish people’s trust.