The Development of Trust: Genesis, Reciprocity, and Repair

The Development of Trust:
Genesis, Reciprocity, and Repair

J. Keith Murnighan
2008

After reviewing definitions and previous models of trust, I will present a new, motivated attributions model of trust development and three current streams of research. The first addresses what we call automatic trust: in a series of four experiments, we show how subtle but specific cues can evoke individuals’ trust schemas, without their conscious awareness, and how this evocation can have considerable impact on substantive trusting behavior. The second stream includes two experiments that investigate and build on previous work on the impact of trust magnitude: although rational models suggest that complete trust is dangerous, our results show that trusting more increases reciprocity and mutual benefit, both monetarily and in terms of work performance. The third, final stream includes two experiments that investigate the timing of a breach of trust and the possibility of trust repair. The results provide good news and bad news: although individuals who have experienced a trust breach can re-establish cooperation – to varying degrees depending on the timing of the breach –our findings suggest that, once broken, real trust cannot be re-established.