A Dual Processing Analysis of Trust Violations with Implications for Cooperation

Abstract

We develop a dual-processing model of emotional and behavioral reactions to negative affective events at work, using trust violations as an example. Our model examines the different types of intrapersonal mental processing--automatic (instantaneous) versus controlled (evaluative)--responsible for attributional inferences and propose that these contrasting inferential processes are differentially associated with a variety of emotional and behavioral responses to negative interpersonal affective events. Conceptualizing trust violations as an affective event allows insights into the violated party’s reactions and attends to the three dimensions of violation-related relationship damage--emotional, cognitive and behavioral. Unlike previous models of trust violations, our dual-processing model describes the dynamic interplay between judgments and emotions as well as between automatic and controlled processing. It incorporates incidental, trait, state and pre-existing affect into the formation of attributional i...