Study On The Features Of Implicit Social Cognition In College Students’ Interpersonal Trust

Interpersonal trust is important factor affecting the interpersonal relationships of individuals, and significant symbol of individual social adaptation. Studies have conducted extensive discussion from sociological, economical and psychological point of view on the aspects of concept, structure, function, influencing factors, formation, and development mechanism of interpersonal trust. Nevertheless, given interpersonal trust is a complex social psychological phenomenon with multiple layers of psychology, culture, society and system. Therefore, considerations and studies upon it by researchers are complex. Different discipline orientation, study perspective, study levels, and a variety of explanations, have made the study of interpersonal trust be difficult to reach agreement.Promoted and enlightened by the studies on implicit memory, Greenwald and Banaji (1995), with basis on consciousness and unconsciousness of social information processing, proposed the concept of implicit social cognition and its study system and model, and clearly pointed out that individual social behavior possesses implication and features of automation. Interpersonal trust comes from the process of interpersonal interaction, and it is resulted from individuals’judging, assessing and processing about the social informations in human communication. So whether the composition of implicit process is also existed in interpersonal trust, and directs individuals’implicit processing about social information of interpersonal communication? Whether the method and paradigm of research of social cognition is suitable to the research of interpersonal trust. Confrom the angle of implicit social cognition, the study carried out exploration on implicit features of college students interpersonal trust, implicit features of how college students process social information in different interpersonal context, and its convertibility, to better comprehend the status quo and development and change of college students interpersonal trust, which is of significant theoretical value and practice meaning to improve college students interpersonal relationship and facilitate their social adaptation.This study adopted the research method of implicit social cognition, and systematically discussed implicit interpersonal trust. The study is divided into3parts, consisted of5experiments, and by turn touches upon issues of existence of college students’ implicit interpersonal trust, features of college students of different interpersonal trust levels in the three phases of implicit cognition, and the convertibility of college students’ implicit interpersonal trust.Based on study results, analysis and discussion, conclusions are drawn as below:1. In implicit attitude, people are more prone to use words that represent trust to describe others, so as to show their trust.2. Implicit interpersonal trust exists intestees with high external trust level, and does not exist in testees with low external trust level.3. There is low correlation between implicit interpersonal trust and explicit interpersonal trust among college students. Explicit interpersonal trust and implicit interpersonal trust are relatively independent from each other.4. For high trust level testees, response time for trust words is evidently less than for distrust words. Priming effects are apparent. For high trust level testees, response time for trust words under the condition of describing contact objects is notly lower than that under the condition of judgment. For low trust level testees, response time for distrust words under the condition of describing contact objects is notly lower than that under the condition of judgment. This indicates that property of emotion of words accelerates the testee’s speed of perception, and possesses facilitatory effects for search of social information property.5. High trust level testees presented evident priming effects in the process of interpersonal trust social cognition impression formation, while low trust level testees did not show priming effects. However, for different evaluation objects, college students with high trust level turned up different types of priming effects. When evaluating family, high trust level testees had advantages in non-delay most recent activation concept or structure, and long-delay frequent priming concept or structure. This supported synaptic mode. When evaluating acquaintance, high trust level testees showed significant main effects in stimuli type and delay or non-delay. Namely, concept or structure with advantage in non-delay (recently activated stimuli) also possessed advantage in long-delay. This supported electric transfer mode. When evaluating strangers, high trust level testees showed significant main effects in type of priming stimuli. In-depth analysis found that concept or structure with advantage in non-delay (recently activated stimuli) also possessed advantage in long-delay. This backed up electric transfer mode. These results demonstrated that social cognition schematism relevant to interpersonal trust has conditionity and objectivity.6. Under the condition of different priming of contact objects, testees displayed certain preferences towards trust wording and distrust wording in response speed. Under the condition of words of relatives, testees responded fast on trust words; under the condition of words of priming of acquaintance, testees responded fast on distrust words; while there was no differences observed for strangers.7. Implicit interpersonal trust possesses certain stability, the technology of conditioned reflex of subliminal evaluative can hardly change implicit interpersonal trust among college students.To sum up, the study possesses innovation in aspects below:First, it explored and proved the existence of implicit interpersonal trust among college students, and conducted preliminary analysis on the features of college students’implicit interpersonal trust. Second, it proposed and verified the three-phases model of implicit interpersonal trust, namely, implicit social cognition, implicit social impression, and implicit social thinking. Third, it investigated the stability and convertibility of college students’ implicit interpersonal trust. Fourth, from the angle of implicit social cognition, it carried out exploration on the implicit features of college students’interpersonal trust, features of how college students process implication of social information in different interpersonal context(s), and its convertibility, and offered new train of thought for study on interpersonal trust.