{
  "id": "crisis-of-confidence.collapse",
  "term": "crisis of confidence",
  "sense": "collapse",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 20,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "A sudden narrowing of the reach members of a collective self read another or the group as having, so each narrows its own reach and the narrowing comes true.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "morale.collective",
      "trust.reliance",
      "reach.action",
      "collective-self.shared",
      "sudden.temporal",
      "narrow.spatial",
      "member.social",
      "read.information",
      "groups.collection",
      "come.arrive",
      "true.accurate"
    ],
    "interaction": "Trust lets members act on a model instead of checking it; when the model is doubted all at once, each withdraws, and the sum of withdrawals removes the reach that was only doubted.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a doubt that makes itself true",
      "a fall with no change in the thing doubted until it happens"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In September 2007 depositors queued outside Northern Rock branches to withdraw savings, the first run on a British bank in over a century.",
      "domain": "finance"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "crisis-of-faith.narrative",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "confidence is a read of reach; faith is trust in the narrative"
    },
    {
      "id": "animal-spirits.urge",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the shared read of reach, collapsing instead of driving action"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "crises of confidence",
    "crisis of confidence",
    "loss of confidence"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-crisis-of-confidence.collapse"
}