The purpose of this study was to determine whether trust repair had a significant effect (compared to a non-trust-repair condition) in a particular experimental scenario, and if so, whether participants’ affective state had any influence on perceptions of trustworthiness in an organization and the level of trust placed in it.
Repairing Trust and Trustworthiness
As explained in Chapter 3, there is a body of research that shows that organizational efforts to repair trust after it has been breached can work (Bottom et al., 2002; Desmet et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2004; Lewicki & Bunker, 1996 Mishra, 1996).
Several experimental studies (Dirks et al., 2011; Ferrin et al., 2007; Kim et al., 2013;
Schniter et al., 2013) and field studies (Andiappan & Treviño, 2010; Chen et al., 2013;
Gillespie et al., 2014; Webber & Bishop, 2012) have suggested this to be the case.
Previous experimental research suggests that participants who observe an effective trust repair condition perceive greater trustworthiness (Ferrin et al., 2007; Nakayachi
& Watabe, 2005) and elicit more trust in the wrongdoer (Schweitzer et al., 2006) than those who either observe no repair condition at all or an inferior response.
Thus, one goal of the current study was to design a new experiment that presented participants with a realistic scenario in which their trust is violated.
Following an earlier data collection of relevant individual difference measures, an experimental manipulation was made in which half of the participants received a trust repair response and the other half did not. More specifically, all participants viewed a TV news report of a National Express coach crash in which two people died and many more were seriously injured. This is the trust failure stimulus. The trust repair manipulation consisted of presenting to half of the study participants (i.e., treatment group) the response that the organization’s CEO actually made in a televised interview.
This is classified as a trust repair response. The control group saw a filler video. For all study participants, willingness to trust and perceptions of trustworthiness were measured at three time points: pre-trust-failure (Time 1), immediately post-trust-failure (Time 2) and post-repair-response manipulation (Time 3). Time 1 measurements provided a baseline of initial willingness to trust and trustworthiness against which changes at Times 2 and 3 could be assessed. Based on the previous literature, the following two hypotheses were advanced.
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Hypothesis 1: There will be a decrease in (a) willingness to trust in the organization and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness, immediately following the trust violation, as indicated by the change in responses from Time 1 to Time 2.
Hypothesis 2: Compared to participants who do not receive a trust repair response, those who receive the trust repair response will show a greater recovery in levels of (a) willingness to trust in the organization and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness, as indicated by the change in responses from Time 2 to Time 3.
Trust Repair and Affect
As stated in Chapter 3, although there have been calls for further investigation of the role of affect in the trust repair process (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005; Fulmer &
Gelfand; Schweitzer, Hershey & Bradlow, 2006; Tomlinson & Mayer, 2009), there has been little progress to this end within the research community. Some experiments have used trust games in which participants are presented with different computer-generated facial stimuli (e.g., an angry face, a smiling face, etc.) and asked how much they would be willing to give their “partner” (Campellone & King, 2013; Kausel &
Connolly, 2014). However, these experiments do not focus on the emotional state of the participant, rather they demonstrate how emotions displayed by another influences the participants’ behaviour. Dunn and Schweitzer (2005) demonstrated a robust relationship between normatively irrelevant, incidental emotions and trust across five studies and suggested that their research be expanded to other areas of trust research, including trust repair. They suggest that a trust violation may cause the trustor to feel negative emotions such as anger, and mitigating such emotions may help the trustee regain trust.
In the current study, I included measures of both trait and state positive and negative affect (TPA, TNA, PA, and NA, respectively), to determine their relationships with trust and perceived organizational trustworthiness. Based on the overview of trait and state affect provided in Chapter 4, in the present study those with high TNA may be more likely to blame National Express for the accident and subsequently may be less likely to perceive them as trustworthy. Conversely, high-TPA individuals may be less likely to blame the organization.
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In relation to state affect, Bagozzi et al. (1999) suggest that the current dominant emotional state one is experiencing influences the way in which information is processed. Specifically, if one is experiencing a positive emotional state, he is likely to use a top-down information processing system and pay little attention to details as positive affect signals a benign environment. Conversely, if one is in a negative emotional state, he is likely to use a bottom-up processing approach and be more reflective and deliberate of the situation. The type of information processing system used is likely to influence how trustworthy National Express is perceived to be, and potentially how willing individuals are to trust company. Thus:
Hypothesis 3: Positive trait affect will relate positively to (a) willingness to trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness, and negative trait affect will relate negatively to (a) willingness to trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness.
Hypothesis 4: Positive state affect will positively relate to (a) willingness to trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness, and negative state affect will relate negatively to (a) willingness to trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness.
Explicit and Implicit Affect
Organizational researchers have traditionally assumed that attitudes, beliefs and behaviours are processes that are conscious enough to be measured accurately, using explicit measures such as self-report surveys (Uhlmann, Leavitt, Menges, Koopman, Howe & Johnson, 2012). However, social and cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that many behaviours result from processes that occur with limited cognitive control and sometimes outside the realm of conscious thought (for a review, see Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001). Such implicit processes are spontaneous and unintentional, and are therefore difficult for participants to accurately self-report.
However, implicit processes are also useful to researchers when they can be used to construct measurement procedures that bypass some of the cognitive biases associated with explicit self-report measures, such as the influence of social desirability and evaluation apprehension (Uhlmann et al., 2012). Furthermore, explicit processing
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requires significant attention and motivation to function effectively (Moors & De Houwe, 2006, Johnson et al., 2010). A great deal of introspection and deductive reasoning are required when measuring affect explicitly, for example, by asking someone to give a mood rating regarding the extent to which they agree with statements such as “I am happy” or “I am proud” using a scale format (Strack &
Deutsch, 2004). These efforts may interfere with participants’ ability to give an accurate appraisal of their current state (Johnson et al., 2010).
The distinction and advantages of implicit versus explicit measures is relevant to the current study because it requires the measurement of participants’ state and trait affect. Discrete emotions may be easier to measure explicitly due to their salient and acute nature (Weiss, 2002). However, by utilising a word-stem completion measure to assess implicit trait affect, and the PANAS measure (Waston et al., 1988) to assess explicit trait affect, Johnson et al. (2010) demonstrated that the implicit measure complemented the explicit one. In their study, both the implicit and explicit measures were reliable in finding that positive affect was positively related to task performance and citizenship behaviour, and negative affect was negatively related to task performance and positively related to counterproductive behaviour.
I expect that the utilisation of an implicit measure of affect will help guard against social desirability responding that may be caused by the use of an explicit measure alone.
Hypothesis 5: Positive implicit affect will relate positively to (a) willingness to trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness, and negative implicit affect will relate negatively to (a) willingness to trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness even when effects of explicit affect measures are controlled.
Emotional Sensitivity
Emotional sensitivity refers to “skill in receiving and interpreting the nonverbal or emotional expressions of others” (Riggio & Reichard, 2008: 171). It is an emotion-related individual difference. According to feelings-as-information theory, emotion-related individual differences are likely to influence how and to what extent affect influences judgement.
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In a leadership context, emotional sensitivity was first classified as leader empathy (Bass, 1960). Emotional sensitivity allows one to gauge the emotional tone of a situation, and may be heightened during times of crisis (Riggio & Reichard, 2008).
Recently, organizational scholars have demonstrated an increased interest in emotional sensitivity. Rubin, Munz and Bommer (2005) termed it emotional recognition, and found that emotional recognition ability, along with personality characteristics, predicted transformational leadership behaviours. Bommer, Pesta and Storrud-Barnes (2011) explored the relationship between emotional recognition and assessment centre performance, controlling for general mental ability and conscientiousness. They found that emotional recognition predicted assessment centre performance uniquely over general mental ability and conscientiousness. However, results varied by race, and although females generally had greater emotional recognition ability than males, sex was not related to assessment centre performance and it did not moderate the relationship between emotional recognition and assessment centre performance.
I believe that people who have high levels of emotional sensitivity are more likely to pick up on and be more affected by the emotional states of other people.
Regarding trust repair, I expect that this will relate to how individuals perceive trust repair efforts. That is, people high in emotional sensitivity will be more able to determine the sincerity of such an effort, should it be given in person rather than in the form of a written statement. Some trust scholars suggest that sincerity is important (Gillespie & Dietz, 2009). This may be the case, but I believe that emotional sensitivity will moderate the ability of people to be able to interpret such a concept. Sincerity may be perceived differently depending on how emotionally sensitive a person is. Also, it is possible that being party to a trust repair effort may elicit an activation or trigger effect in those that are highly emotionally sensitive in that it may trigger potentially affect-laden memories of the original transgression that could influence attitudes and future behaviours. In the context of this study, I posit that emotional sensitivity will moderate the relationship between the dependent variables and affect. However, it is difficult to predict a directional relationship without knowing how participants interpret the trust repair response. Thus:
Hypothesis 6: Emotional sensitivity (measured at Time 1) will moderate the relationship between affect, willingness to trust and perceived organizational trustworthiness at Times 2 and 3.
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Regulatory Focus
Regulatory focus theory posits that people either focus more attention on the promotion of positive outcomes, or on the prevention of negative outcomes, in pursuit of goal attainment (Higgins, 1997). Crowe and Higgins (1997: 117) stated that “a promotion focus is concerned with advancement, growth, and accomplishment, whereas a prevention focus is concerned with security, safety and responsibility”.
Regulatory focus theory has received increasing attention in organizational psychology (Lanaj, Chan & Johnson, 2012), and has been found to influence attitudes and behaviours in the realms of ethics (Gino & Margolis, 2011), decision-making (Crowe & Higgins, 1997), negotiations (Appelt & Higgins, 2010), product purchasing (Pham & Chang, 2010), and, as discussed in Chapter 2, trust (Keller et al., 2014; Wirtz
& Lwin, 2009). In a meta-analysis, Lanaj et al. (2012) found that regulatory focus theory variables have relevant relationships with work outcomes and are not made redundant by other individual difference variables.
In the context of this study, I am particularly interested in how one’s regulatory focus, i.e., whether one primarily holds a promotion or prevention focus, influences perceived organizational trustworthiness and willingness to trust, and how regulatory focus interacts with affect. Gino & Margolis (2011) showed that an individual’s regulatory focus influenced the likelihood of him or her acting unethically. These authors found that people with a promotion focus were more likely to act unethically than those with a prevention focus, and suggested that such an inclination to act dishonestly could be explained by one’s attitude towards risk. Individuals with a promotion focus are more likely to engage risk-seeking behaviours than are those with a prevention focus, which predicts an inclination to avoid risk. As trust involves risk (Mayer et al., 1995), it may be that people with a prevention focus will be less likely to trust after a transgression than will those with a promotion focus. Equally, those with a promotion focus may be more willing to trust after a transgression if they believe doing so will help lead to goal attainment.
Regulatory focus also sensitizes people to experiencing emotions (Lanaj et al., 2012). Lanaj and colleagues reported that employees with a promotion focus tended to report more positive emotions, as well as higher self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Conversely, prevention-focused employees report more negative emotions and a lower feeling of self-worth. This may impact on how people deal with unforeseen
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difficulties; promotion-focused individuals may be more resilient in the face of such problems than their prevention-focused counterparts.
Taking the above into consideration, I posit that those with high levels of prevention focus would be less likely to perceive National Express as being trustworthy, and would hold lower levels of trust in the organization than participants who are promotion-focused. Promotion-focused individuals were expected to have higher perceptions of trustworthiness and overall trust levels, particularly after trust repair. Therefore, the following two hypotheses based on regulatory focus theory were proposed:
Hypothesis 7: Promotion-focus (measured at Time 1) will moderate the relationships of affect with (a) willingness to trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness, measured at Times 2 and 3.
Hypothesis 8: Prevention-focus (measured at Time 1) will moderate the relationships of affect with (a) trust and (b) perceived organizational trustworthiness, measured at Times 2 and 3.