The Effect And Developing Characteristics Of Apology On Trust Recovery Of 6-to 10-year-old Children

Trust is the foundation of interpersonal relationships,but trust is extremely fragile and is vulnerable to destruction.In order to maintain good interpersonal relationships,trust violators often take some strategies to repair it.At present,the research on trust recovery mainly focuses on the felds of economics,organization management……,and they focus on the discussion of adult groups,but the establishment and maintenance of peer relationships is also very important for children's development.How can children effectively repair trust is still unclear when it comes to trust violations.A total of 390 children aged 6,8 and 10 participated in this study.Using the trust game paradigm to examine that after trust violation,the effect and developing characteristics of two different types of apology(one is expression of regret,another is acknowledgement of responsibility and declaration of repentance)on trust recovery of 6-10 years old children;on this basis,we further explore that in the group of trust recovery,the role of the individual characteristics of the victim — — the perceived sincerity of apology.Using analysis of variance,partial-correlation analysis and so on,this study mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)For children aged 6-10 years old,two different types of apology can repair the damaged trust to a certain extent,that is,the level of trust behavior and trust belief of the apology group is significantly higher than that of the no apology group;At the same time,two different types of apology can not completely repair the damaged trust behavior,but the apology of "expression of regret" can completely repair the children's trust belief,and the apology of "acknowledgement of responsibility and declaration of repentance" cannot completely repair the damaged trust belief.(2)For two different types of apology,trust belief are partially mediating in the process of apology to repair trust behavior.Specifically,on the one hand the two apologies can directly repair the trust behavior of children,and on the other hand the two apologies also can indirectly repair the trust behavior by affecting the trust belief.(3)There is a significant difference in the perception of the sincerity of two different apologies for children aged 6-10 years old.Children assess the perceived sincerity of the apology which contains “acknowledgement of responsibility and declaration of repentance” is significantly higher than the apology of “expression of regret”.The evaluation for perception of the apologies' sincerity can significantly predict the level of trust behavior and trust beliefs after trust recovery.(4)Multiple mediating analysis shows : apologies can affect the trust behavior through the perceived sincerity of apology,and can also via the perceived sincerity of apology to affect trust belief and then act on trust behavior.The results of this study indicate that two different apologies can restore trust to a certain extent,in which the victim's perception of apology' sincerity plays an important role in trust recovery.