The Group Differences In Trust Repair:the Effect Of Competing And Cooperative Contexts

Trust is an integral part of social interaction,and high level of trust can bring good benefits to interpersonal relationships and social development.However,trust often includes two characteristics of riskiness and vulnerability,and could be easily damaged,thus making trust repair particularly important.Previous research has generally demonstrated that both in groups divided according to specific rules and in naturally formed groups,people show in-group preferences,i.e.,they are more kind,tolerant and altruistic toward in-groups and give rationalizations to ingroup members after their violations,while they are more suspicious,indifferent and even hostile toward out-group members.However,some researchers have found that ingroup members who violate social norms are punished and sanctioned more severely,this phenomenon is known as the black sheep effect.Whether group identity affects trust repair effects and whether ingroup preferences or the black sheep effect will emerge in trust repair needs to be further investigated.In addition,cooperation and competition are prevalent in people’s interpersonal interactions,and studies have shown that competitive/cooperative situations affect people’s perceived group identity and trust levels.So,do different interactive situations(competitive/cooperative)affect the role of group identity on trust repair?This study was divided into two experiments to test the experimental hypotheses.Experiment 1 used a one-way between-subjects experimental design with the independent variable of group identity(in-group,out-group)and the dependent variable of trust repair level,which was measured in this study by the amount of subjects’ investment in the trust game.In this study,148 college students were selected as subjects to examine the effect of in-group and out-group identity on the effect of trust repair using the minimal group paradigm and the trust game paradigm.The results of the study showed that the level of trust repair was significantly higher in the out-group than in-group,and the black sheep effect emerged.Experiment 2 adopted a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design to further investigate the effect of group identity on trust repair in different interactive situation(competitive,cooperative).This experiment recruited 161 college students as the study subjects,and still used the minimal group paradigm and the trust game paradigm.The results showed that(1)the main effect of the interaction situation was significant.Specifically the level of trust repair in the cooperation situation was significantly higher than that in the competition situation.(2)The main effect of group identity was significant.Specifically,the level of trust repair was significantly higher in the out-group than in-group.(3)The interaction effect of interaction situation and group identity was significant.Specifically,the trust repair level of the out-group was significantly higher than that of the in-group in the competition situation;in the cooperation situation,there was no significant difference between the trust repair level of the in-and out-group,and both had good restoration results.Through the two experiments,this study draws the following two conclusions.(1)In trust repair,the trust repair level of the out-group was significantly higher than that of the in-group,and the black sheep effect appeared.(2)The effect of group identity on trust repair varies across interaction situation(competition,cooperation): In the competition context,the repair level of the out-group was significantly higher than that of the in-group,and the black sheep effect was observed.In the cooperative context,both in-group and out-group had good restoration results and had no significant difference.