Power and the spillover effects of past trust experiences

Abstract: Trust is a cornerstone of successful work relationships and, according to rational-choice theories, should only be affected by interactions with persons in those work relationships and not by trust experiences with third parties outside of them. Yet, research on the experiential view of trust has shown that the decision to trust someone in one work relationship is often impacted by trust experiences with third parties outside of that relationship. To reconcile the rational viewpoint that third-party spillover effects should not occur with the experiential viewpoint of trust that they do, I propose and show in various studies that power helps explain when and why trust is subject to spillover. High-power individuals do not let trust experiences with third parties shape their trust in other relationships whereas low-power individuals do because high-power individuals are better at preventing the emotions that result from third-party trust actions from shaping their trust.

Keywords: power, trust, third-parties, spillovers, emotions.