Cheap talk, valuable results? A causal attribution model of the impact of promises and apologies on short-term trust recovery

Although prior work on trust has extensively studied the development of interpersonal trust in professional relationships, the benefits of trust, and the harmful consequences of trust violations, remarkably little research has been directed toward understanding the trust recovery process after a violation. Recent empirical work on trust has provided evidence that trust recovery can be facilitated by promises of future trustworthiness and apologies for prior trust violations (i.e., forms of "cheap talk" that are costless for the speaker and unverifiable by the receiver). Notably, cheap talk was related to the recovery of trust and cooperation even in the short-term, before the victim could see how the offender would actually behave in subsequent interactions. However, these studies did not examine theoretical mechanisms that account for this effect or the boundary conditions under which this effect is most likely to occur. Thus, it remains unclear why or when cheap talk can facilitate trust recovery.; This dissertation examines how promises and apologies relate to short-term trust recovery. Drawing upon Weiner's (1986) causal attribution theory and the literature on social accounts, it is argued that these forms of cheap talk are negatively related to the victim's attributions of stability regarding the cause of the violation. Lower stability attributions are posited to produce higher hope emotions and lower fear emotions, and result in higher trust expectancy, as the victim is likely to conclude that future violations are unlikely to recur due to unstable causes. In turn, emotional reactions and trust expectancy are predicted to jointly affect short-term trust recovery. This study examines one possible boundary condition in testing whether the effects of cheap talk on stability attributions are moderated by offense severity. Finally, this study also considered the impact of message content versus gesture on short-term trust recovery in order to discern whether it is the words that are used or the polite gesture of speaking them that is related to stability attributions.; To test these hypotheses, participants were randomly assigned to one of eight experimental conditions in a 2 (promise) x 2 (apology) x 2 (offense severity) between-subjects factorial design, and played a modified version of the Trust Game. The results indicated that promises and apologies were not related to stability attributions, nor did these forms of cheap talk interact with offense severity on stability attributions. However, this study did find that the type of message interacted with offense severity such that content-free messages (i.e., garbled messages that contained neither a promise nor an apology) were associated with higher stability attributions relative to content messages (promises, apologies, promise-plus-apologies) when offense severity was high. This study also found support for Weiner's (1986) attribution theory in the context of short-term trust recovery by highlighting the instrumental role of stability attributions and specific emotional reactions as key variables in the short-term trust recovery process. Furthermore, post hoc analyses revealed that although promises and apologies were not related to stability attributions, significant effects were found for these messages on perceptions of interactional justice. These results are discussed along with practical implications, study limitations, and directions for future research.