>most people stated that they wanted to avoid finding out that one of their colleagues or family members was a Stasi informant and that viewing those files would impact their ability to trust others

Anecdotally: it didn't work, though, as the former denunciants knew who they informed on and either came out (didn't hear that from my parents) or acted different and thereby dropped hints.

IMO the water on that is seriously muddled, as

• files and viewing opportunity have been available for 20-30 years, mixing now nostalgia and real reasons back when the decision had been made
• files were given out incremental, making experience worse: files aren't even complete yet (a lot of paper had been shredded manually and money wasn't made available to recover the files)
  (Anecdote again: my father abstained from asking for _further_ files later.)