Influence of indirect information on interpersonal trust despite direct information.

Abstract

Trust is integral to successful relationships. The development of trust stems from how one person treats others, and there are multiple ways to learn about someone's trust-relevant behavior. The present research captures the development of trust to examine if trust-relevant impressions and behavior are influenced by indirect behavioral information (i.e., descriptions of how a person treated another individual)-even in the presence of substantial direct behavioral information (i.e., self-relevant, first-hand experience with a person). Participants had repeated interpersonal exchanges with a partner who was trustworthy or untrustworthy with participants' money. The present studies vary the frequency with which (Studies 1 & 2), the order in which (Study 3) and the number of people for whom (Study 4) indirect information (i.e., brief vignettes describing trustworthy or untrustworthy behavior) were presented. As predicted, across 4 studies, we observed a robust effect of indirect-information despite the presence of substantial direct information. Even after dozens of interactions in which a partner betrayed (or not), a brief behavioral description of a partner influenced participants' willingness to actually trust the partner with money, memory-based estimates of partner-behavior, and impressions of the partner. These effects were observed even though participants were also sensitive to partners' actual trust behavior, and even when indirect behavioral descriptions were only presented a single time. Impressions were identified as a strong candidate mechanism for the effect of indirect-information on behavior. We discuss implications of the persistence of indirect information for impression formation, relationship development, and future studies of trust. (PsycINFO Database Record

Incidental impressions formed from visual social cues; updating and group context

“…In contrast to prior studies exploring order (e.g., Asch, 1946;Belmore, 1987;and see Tulving, 2008 for a review) or updating (e.g., Delgado et al, 2005;Zarolia et al, 2017) effects, we found no evidence for primacy effects. One reason for this may be that studies finding primacy effects have used explicit, categorical statements to drive impression formation.…”

The adaptation of trust behavior and the association with friendships in adolescents

“…For example, late adolescents (Mage=17.5) are more able to adapt their behavior when a priori information is not in line with actual behavior compared to young adolescents (Mage=13.2) (Lee et al, 2016). Nevertheless, even in late adolescents (Mage=19.1) and young adults (Mage=26.6), a priori information which is discrepant with actual behavior continues to have an effect on trust behavior throughout a multi-round game (Delgado et al, 2005;Zarolia et al, 2017). Furthermore, age effects have also been found in the neural mechanisms of trust.…”

Acetaminophen influences social and economic trust

“…These neural differences across instantiations of the TG-I suggest that trust decisions made in different contexts may rely on different psychological processes that could be differentially impacted by acetaminophen 31 . Although a few studies have examined differences in trusting behavior across repeated interactions when investors were either given prior expectations or not 30,32 , more research is needed to understand how trust decisions differ psychologically when information predicting reciprocity is or is not available. One possible difference is that when participants are not provided with any expectations, they must generate them on their own, presumably by drawing on past experiences with other people in similar situations.…”