Getting Off on the Wrong Foot: The Timing of a Breach and the Restoration of Trust

Abstract

Few interpersonal relationships endure without one party violating the other's expectations. Thus, the ability to build trust and to restore cooperation after a breach can be critical for the preservation of positive relationships. Using an iterated prisoner's dilemma, this article presents two experiments that investigated the effects of the timing of a trust breach-at the start of an interaction, after 5 trials, after 10 trials, or not at all. The findings indicate that getting off on the wrong foot has devastating long-term consequences. Although later breaches seemed to limit cooperation for only a short time, they still planted a seed of distrust that surfaced in the end.

Gender differences in trust dynamics: Women trust more than men following a trust violation

“…Past research has largely focused on the role of situational factors, such as emotion (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005;Lount, 2010), social status (Lount & Pettit, 2011), and timing of the trust breach (Lount et al, 2008) to predict trust restoration. Our research shows that gender is one important personal characteristic that influences trust recovery.…”

“…We extend our investigation in Study 2 by considering trust following a different untrustworthy experience. Prior work (e.g., Lount et al, 2008) has found that the timing of a relationship breaches matters. Whereas participants in Study 1 experienced a relationship that was initially trustworthy followed by an untrustworthy episode, in Study 2 participants are initially exposed to a counterpart's untrustworthy actions, followed by an attempt to rebuild trust.…”

“…In spite of growing interest in how trust changes over time, we know little about how characteristics of the trusting party influence reactions to untrustworthy behavior. Both personal and situational factors are critical to predicting behavior (Epstein & O'Brien, 1985;Mischel & Shoda, 1995), but trust scholars have mostly focused on situational factors, such as emotion (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005;Lount, 2010), social status (Lount & Pettit, 2011), and timing of the trust breach (Lount et al, 2008). We extend knowledge by exploring whether gender is one important personal characteristic that influences trust following a violation.…”

“…Despite the importance of trust for efficient social functioning (Balliet & Van Lange, 2013;Lewicki & Bunker, 1996), trust violations are common (Elangovan & Shapiro, 1998;Lount, Zhong, Sivanathan, & Murnighan, 2008). Trust is fragile (Kramer, 1999), but in some cases it can be restored (e.g., Ferrin, Kim, Cooper, & Dirks, 2007;Schweitzer, Hershey, & Bradlow, 2006).…”

How Monitoring Influences Trust: A Tale of Two Faces

“…Repeated trust games have been used to study trust building (Pillutla, Malhotra, and Murnighan 2003;Ho and Weigelt, 2005) and trust repair (Schweitzer, Hershey, and Bradlow 2006;Kim, Dirks, Cooper, and Ferrin 2006;Lount, Zhong, Sivanathan and Murnighan 2008). In our studies, we use a repeated trust game to study the influence of monitoring.…”