How much do you trust me? Determining thresholds for trust to be perceived as such

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Joris Lammers, since 3/2021
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 409549298

Trust and distrust cannot be experienced within a social vacuum. Both states require at least one more entity: the target of (dis)trust. Signaling one's (dis)trust can produce stark reactions in the addressee. Surprisingly, little research has investigated how displaying one's distrust (or one's trust respectively) influences the target. How does it affect people if they are the target and someone expresses distrust, a little trust, or even full trust in them? At which level is trust experienced as such? Are there specific thresholds that need to be exerted for trust to be experienced by the target? Preliminary own research analyzing a trustee's reactions to a linearly expressed level of trust in well-defined economic trust games suggests that, indeed, a threshold needs to be crossed for trust to be experienced as such. This threshold has direct consequences for the trustor-trustee relationship. If the expressed trust lies below this threshold, it will be punished. If it lies above the threshold, it will be rewarded. The present proposal aims to investigate such a potential threshold by identifying specific factors that may increase or decrease the threshold. To do so, the present proposal relies on the "Emotions As Social Information" model (EASI; Van Kleef, 2009) as a general framework. The EASI model makes predictions about how a target of an expressed emotion reacts to the emotion. Particularly, the EASI model posits that the target's reactions are influenced by (i) the social relation between the person who expresses the emotion and the target as well as (II) the target's information processing motivation and ability. Adopting the theoretical umbrella of the EASI model, the proposal aims to investigate social relational and individual processing factors as potential factors that modulate the trust threshold. Higher thresholds for trust to be experienced as such are expected for close others compared distant others as well as for communal relationships compared to exchange relationships. Furthermore, the deeper the information processing of the trust target is, the stronger will his or her specific reactions be. Eight studies are outlined to investigate these factors on potential trust thresholds. In a first step, social relational factors will be investigated. Study 1 seeks to examine the influence of communal versus exchange relationships on the threshold for trust. Study 2a/b investigate the influence of social proximity as the most basic dimension of social relations. In a second step, Study 3a/b will experimentally vary the target's motivation and Study 4 the target's cognitive ability to engage in deep information processing. Studies 5a/b will test for the generalizability of across different trust domains. Overall, the present proposal will provide insights in trust formation, not only from the perspective of the trustor, but also from the perspective of the person who is (or is not) trusted.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Ann-Christin Posten, until 3/2021