TRUSTING A CROOK WITH YOUR HEAD VERSUS HEART: EFFECTS OF PRIMING HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL COLLECTIVISM ON AFFECTIVE-COGNITIVE TRUST IN AN INTERGROUP CONTEXT

Abstract

Despite extensive literature on horizontal collectivism (HC) and vertical collectivism (VC), to our knowledge, no previous studies have primed HC and VC to distinguish their effects or empirically investigated links between HC-VC and affective-cognitive trust. This study aimed to fill this gap by isolating effects of HC and VC on affective-cognitive trust in a transgressional intergroup context through priming. Since affective and cognitive trust differ in consequences, their causes were analysed from cultural perspectives, HC and VC. HC was hypothesised to be related to affective, but not cognitive, trust, and demonstrate ingroup bias. VC was hypothesised to be related to cognitive, but not affective, trust and demonstrate black-sheep effect (BSE). Participants were primed before evaluating ingroup and outgroup transgressors who had committed monetary crimes, based on amount of affective and cognitive trust they would place in them. Although VC and HC effects did not differ across different types of trust, ingroup bias emerged in HC, demonstrating higher ingroup trust than outgroup but BSE did not emerge in VC. There was also a novel finding where VC showed outgroup bias, demonstrating higher outgroup trust than control. Theoretical implications and practical implications on reducing stigma against ex-offenders are discussed.