Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands & Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2023 Apr 14;18(4):e0284500. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284500. eCollection 2023.
Being trusted has many positive implications for one's wellbeing (e.g., a better career, more satisfying interpersonal relationships). Scholars have suggested that people actively attempt to earn trust. However, it is not clear what makes people invest in actions that may earn them trust. We propose that cognitive abstraction (more than concreteness) facilitates seeing the long-term benefits of performing behaviors (i.e., prosocial behaviors) for gaining trust. We conducted a survey among employees and their supervisors and two yoked experiments-total N = 1098 or 549 pairs. In support of our claim, we find that cognitive abstraction leads to more prosocial behavior, which subsequently increases trust received. Furthermore, the effect of abstraction on the performance of prosocial behavior is limited to situations where such behavior can be observed by others (and thus be a basis for gaining observers' trust). Our research shows when and why people decide to act in ways that may gain them trust and clarifies how cognitive abstraction influences the display of prosocial behavior and the subsequent trust received from fellow organization members.
被信任对一个人的幸福感有许多积极的影响(例如,更好的职业、更令人满意的人际关系)。学者们认为,人们会积极努力赢得信任。然而,是什么促使人们投资于可能使他们获得信任的行为尚不清楚。我们提出,认知抽象(而不是具体性)有助于看到表现行为(即亲社会行为)以获得信任的长期利益。我们对员工及其主管进行了一项调查,并进行了两项配对实验——总共有 1098 人或 549 对。为了支持我们的主张,我们发现认知抽象会导致更多的亲社会行为,而这种行为随后会增加所获得的信任。此外,抽象对亲社会行为表现的影响仅限于这种行为可以被他人观察到的情况(因此可以作为获得观察者信任的基础)。我们的研究表明了人们何时以及为何决定以可能获得信任的方式行事,并阐明了认知抽象如何影响亲社会行为的表现以及随后从组织成员那里获得的信任。