Interpersonal Trust within Negotiations: Meta-Analytic Evidence, Critical Contingencies, and Directions for Future Research

Abstract

Trust has long been recognized, by scholars and practitioners alike, as an important factor for negotiation success. However, there has been little effort to date to empirically review or theoretically synthesize the research on trust in the context of negotiations. We present a social exchange framework that describes the processes through which trust influences negotiation behaviors and outcomes. We identified three critical contingencies that modified the effects of trust on negotiation behaviors and outcomes. A meta-analysis on a sample of 38 independent studies provided considerable support for the model, and also confirmed the importance of the three contingencies for understanding the effects of trust. The framework and accompanying empirical evidence provide a necessary theoretical and empirical integration of the trust and negotiation literatures. Based on the theory and meta-analytical findings, we identified critical gaps and limitations in existing research, and we propose a research agenda to address key theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues identified by our framework and review.