Effects of interpersonal trust on employee avoidance and approach self-regulation

Abstract

We predicted that two prominent forms of trust found in organization science would be differentially associated with avoidance (self-protection) and approach (interpersonal helping) behaviors because they tap different psychological systems of self-regulation. We also predicted that the trust forms would interact, due to how the underlying selfregulation systems interrelate. Our model was confirmed in a large sample of engineers employed by a Fortune 500 company. Our study extends prior research on interpersonal trust that assumes an employee integrates all the positive and negative information possessed about another into a single summary trust statistic and then behaves accordingly.