权力和地位对信任行为的影响

采用两个实验探讨了权力和地位对信任和不信任行为的影响。实验1首先通过角色分配法操纵被试的权力感(高vs.低),然后采用信任和非信任博弈任务来测量被试的信任和不信任行为。结果发现,在信任行为上,高权力者比低权力者存在更低的信任水平;但在不信任行为上,二者不存在显著差异。实验2同时操纵被试的权力和地位水平,探索二者对信任和不信任行为的影响。结果发现:在信任行为上,高权力者比低权力者存在更低的信任水平,与之相反,高地位者比低地位者存在更高的信任水平,并且权力和地位的交互作用不显著;而在不信任行为上,权力和地位的效应均不显著。该研究结果说明,(1)权力负向影响信任行为,而地位正向影响信任行为;(2)权力和地位对信任的影响是独立的。

The influence of power and status on trust behavior

Trust is very important to facilitate and maintain social interaction for both individuals, and organizations.Power and status are important vertical dimensions in interpersonal relationships and can have important impacts on people's cognition and behavior. Recent research has shown that power can negatively predict trust, that is, low-power people have a higher level of trust in others than high-power people. In contrast, studies have shown that social status is predicting trust—subjects with high social status will show a higher level of trust behavior.The lack of distinguishing the concept of power and status could be the reason for the inconsistent findings. Recent research shows that power mainly refers to the degree of individual control over others, emphasizing the self-perspective perspective, and the status mainly emphasizes the extent to which individuals are perceived to be respected by others, emphasizing the perspective of others. According to this view, power negatively predicts trust, and status is positively predicting trust. Driven by this view, this study manipulated power and status in the same experiment, and then observed the influence of power and status on trust.In addition, previous studies have regarded trust and distrust as a continuous unified dimension, and recent research shows that trust and distrust are two independent dimensions.Trust refers to the disposition to produce positive expectations on other under risk condition, whereas distrust refers to the disposition to avoid being hurt by a counterpart. Given trust and distrust have different antecedents, the second aim of the present study is to examine the effects of power and status on trust.Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of power and status on trust and distrust. Experiment 1 used a single-factor completely random experiment design to explore the effects of power on both trust and distrust behavior through the trust game task and the distrust game task. Experiment 2 used two factors (power: high, low) x2 (status: high, low) design to explore the opposite effect of power and status on trust, while further verifying the influence of power and status on distrust. The two experiments were divided into three steps. First, the power or/and status are manipulated. Secondly, the experimental process of completing the trust task and the distrust task is completed. Finally, the manipulation of the independent variable is checked.The results are as follows: (1) The sense of power and status of the participants have an impact on the behavior of trust. Compared with the high-power subjects, those with lower- power have higher level of interpersonal trust; compared with the subjects with lower social status, the subjects with higher status show higher level of interpersonal trust.(2) The sense of power and status of the participants independently affect their level of interpersonal trust. There is no interaction between them. (3) There is no significant difference in the influence of the power and status of the participants on their distrust behavior.