The Effects Of Contract Involvement On Interpersonal Trust

In modern society,the trust problem is gradually prominent,and trust crisis appears more and more frequently.More and more people prefer to choose "black and white" contracts to establish relationships and solve problems,and gradually more transactions and cooperative relationships take place in the form of contracts.Therefore,the research on the relationship between contract and trust has been widely concerned by the academic circle,but there are still differences on the relationship between contract and trust.Some scholars pay attention to the substitution or complementary relationship between contract and trust,but there is no doubt that contract and trust,as two important governance mechanisms,have an important impact on the parties and the cooperative relationship.Considering the importance of contract and trust to cooperation,this study draws lessons from Fabrice to propose the research topic of how contract can increase or decrease trust.Most of the existing studies have adopted mature contracts imposed by third parties to explore the influence of contracts on trust.From the perspective of contract making process,this study explores the influence of individual participation in contract making process on interpersonal trust and its mechanism.Specifically,the paper examines the influence of personal participation in contract formulation on interpersonal trust of contract parties.Analyze the potential mechanism of contract participation influencing interpersonal trust,that is,the mediating role of group identity in the influence of contract participation on interpersonal trust.Analyze the boundary conditions that contract participation affects interpersonal trust,that is,the moderating effect of contract clause type(technical type vs.legal type) on the relationship between contract participation and interpersonal trust.The method of combining Quasi-Experimentation Design based Field Research with laboratory experiment is studied.Among them,the field study used the dormitory convention making activity in the dormitory style competition organized by the youth league committee of a university in Tianjin,and investigated the influence of the contract making process under the dormitory relationship on interpersonal trust and its mechanism through the questionnaire survey of interpersonal trust among college students.In the laboratory experiment,two non-psychology majors in some Tianjin university were selected as subjects to investigate the influence and mechanism of individual participation in contract making process on interpersonal trust by manipulating contract participation.The results of the field study show that participating in the formulation of dormitory contract can enhance interpersonal trust,and group identity plays an intermediary role.The results of the laboratory experiment show that group identity played a mediating role in the influence of contract participation on the subjects'emotion(benevolence) and cognition(dependence)trust to other subjects.Participation in contract making can increase the amount of investment(trust behavior) of the subjects to other subjects in the trust game,but group identity cannot explain this effect.In each dimension of trust,the moderating effect of contract clause type is not significant.Based on the results of the two studies,participation in contract can improve the trust of partners who participate in the formulation of contract,and the sense of group identity plays an intermediary role in it,but the type of contract terms plays an insignificant role in regulating the relationship between participation in contract and interpersonal trust.