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The Influencing Factors And Mechanism Of Interpersonal Trust

Posted on:2011-09-05Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z H HanFull Text:PDF
GTID:1117330332472676Subject:Sociology
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Interpersonal trust, as a social capital, is a simplified social mechanism of social complexity. It is influenced by the factors like culture, value, personality, social contact, risk perception and ecnomic status. Mutual efforts in interpersonal trust can be the result of interest calculating, or the psychological aptitude of some sort of instinct. On the base of guanxi, three parts are included in this dissertation. Firstly, psychological structure of mental concepts were clarified. Secondly, the effect of the trusted persons'personal capital on the one to trust was studied. Finally a three-stage interpersonal trust model was presented with the research of guanxi, and the internal mechanism of the model was discussed.Using verbal association method to study the mental structure of trust, the author found six main factors in the structure, which are cognitive evaluation, mentation, interactive behavior, personality, behavioral regulation and exampel. The study showed that the notion of trust is aiming strangers, and is correlated with personalities. This concept is characterized as interest-expecting and responsibility-sharing.Facial attractiveness was found to be significantly associated with credibility estimate. The ways of presenting faces also had an effect on the perception of credibility. With abstractive stimula, participants attended to give the highest estimate of credibility for mid-attractive faces. With visual stimula, credibility increased significantly with the facial attrcitineness. The gender of trustor had no signigicant effect on credibility, while the gender of the trusted did have an effect on credibility. The estimate of credibility was found to increase with the age of the trusted.Occupation is an important interpersonal trust source. The investigation on college students found that'undergraduates put relatively low trust on kinds of occupations, among which they trusted scientists, teachers and army soldiers most. The lest trusted occupations are tour guides, businessmen and the underworld. Among them are farmers, psychologists,lawyers,policemen, sportsmen, doctors, drivers, waiters, civil servants,jounalists, chengguan, actors etc. The institutions undergraduates trusted from most to least are state government, education institutions, banks, judicature, sports, local government, news media, medical institutions, show business. Females put more trust than males on education institutions, local government and judicature. Males gave more credibility to actors. Internet users estimated the credibility of occupations like undergraduates, but put significant low trust on government officials. Investigation suggested that credibility of an occupation is correlated with potential threaten one may perceived, social capital and occupational expectations.Occupational Stereotype is one important variant of occupation. This research found that, compared with neutral occupations, stereotypes of vulnerable-positive occupations and mighty-negative occupations caused more understanding and tolerance for using violence. The positive effects of some certain positive affair were restricted by the stereotype of an occupation. If it was from a mighty-negative occupation, the motive was usually suspected. The titer of the same positive affair differed with occupations. A dilution effect was found.Different affairs in daily life have different effects on personal trust. The more negative effects an affair had, the more it affected a person involved. The more parts a negative affair effected, the worse it did harm to interpersonal trust. The estimate of a negative affair depended on the degree it met the need of the individual. Males payed more attention to the damage a personal relation affair may do to interpersonal trust, while females focused on personal ability and characteristics in the damage to personal trust.Economic gaps had negative effects on personal trust. Personal trust can be easily found between economically similar individuals than economically different ones. Bigger economic gaps caused unfair competition expectation, but no significant difference was found in respect of betray expectaion.Negative effects of betray was correlated with the nature of relation of both sides. In the prisoners'dilemma, participants tended not to confess for the family counterpart, and to use strategy of confess for stranger counterpart, no matter the counterpart confess or not. People had more tolerance for family member's betrayal but least for strangers'. For whether institutional negative affairs or comradeship negative affairs, the mutual trust between strangers was more likely to be destroyed than the trust between acquaintances. Family members's failure in trust was more likely to be pardoned than acquaintances'and strangers'betrayal, with less willingness to spread and revenge. The relationship with strangers was likely impacted by institutional betrayals, while betrayal in comradeship between acquaintances and family members had more negative impact than institutional betrayals.Combining the present studies and the result of guanxi research, this dissertation presented a three-stage interpersonal trust model. Interpersonal trust includes stranger trust, acquaintance trust and family trust, which are the stages of trust. There are significant differences in many aspects, such as the base of the trust, expectations, manitainance of the relation, the possibilities to revenge and so on. The development of these three stages is continuous, with the possibility of turnning to distrust.Variant expectations fitted with counterparts'actual behaviors can be described as the mechanism of the interpersonal trust in each stage of this model. Mental expectation is consist of process expectation and consequence expectation. Different expectations are found in different stage of interpersonal trust. Relationship, situation, perceived threaten are the main factors that effect expectation. Positive accordance of primary expectation with counterpart's actual behaviors can make the interpersonal trust reinforced, and negative accordance can weaken the mutual trust accordingly.
Keywords/Search Tags:interpersonal trust, relationship, personal capital, values fit
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