Trust and distrust are essential elements of human interaction, yet little is known about how trust and distrust shape how we perceive others. To close this gap, we examined how trust versus distrust influences stereotyping. Recent research has suggested that distrust fosters the use of cognitive nonroutine strategies. Building on these findings, we investigated the hypothesis that--contrary to intuition--it might be distrust rather than trust that reduces stereotyping. Supporting this hypothesis, engaging in an untrustworthy (vs. trustworthy vs. trust-unrelated) interaction resulted in less stereotypic evaluations in an unrelated person-judgment task (Experiment 1). Replicating the stereotype-reducing effect, 2 different distrust (vs. trust) priming manipulations led to less stereotypic person judgments in 2 different stereotyping paradigms (Experiments 2A and 2B). We hypothesized that a comparison focus on dissimilarities--a nonroutine mechanism that works against stereotyping--causes this stereotype-reducing effect. In line with this notion, distrust led to a more pronounced dissimilarity-focus (Experiment 3), and the stereotype-reducing effect of distrust diminished when this dissimilarity-focus was impaired (Experiment 4). Our findings suggest that distrust induces a dissimilarity-focus that in turn reduces stereotyping.

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Trust is a key ingredient in decision making, as it allows us to rely on the information we receive. Although trust is usually viewed as a positive element of decision making, we suggest that its effects on memory are costly rather than beneficial. Across nine studies using three different manipulations of trust and distrust and three different memory paradigms, we find that trust reduces memory performance as compared with distrust. In Study 1, trust leads to higher acceptance rates of misinformation. Studies 2a and 2b demonstrate that participants in a distrust and a control condition perform better at a memoryrecognition task than participants in a trust condition. Studies 3a and 3b show that trust also reduces free recall of memory content. Examining the underlying mechanism, we find that reduced memory performance in a state of trust is caused by an increased perception of similarities between items that are to be memorized. Following a causal chain design, Study 4 shows that trust increases the sensitivity to similarities as compared with distrust and a control condition, and Study 5 shows that a processing focus on similarities reduces memory accuracy. Studies 6 and 7 create circumstances that either leave the proposed mediator free to vary or interrupt it via the induction of a similarity-focus (Study 6) or a difference-focus (Study 7). The disadvantage of trust is only present if the mediating processing focus can freely operate. Overall, these studies show that trust impairs memory performance due to an increased perception of similarities between memory content.