Trusting is for doing: on goals, mindsets, and trust

Abstract

In this paper we seek to disentangle goals and trust, and argue that people’s goals while interacting with other people is likely to influence the experience of trust. This again builds on the assumptions that trust is not merely a basis for decisions but a factor that influences (often favorably) other valued outcomes. Our experience of trust helps us display trust which furthers relational goals (e.g. developing work-relationships). Thus, this paper adopts a pragmatic perspective on trust (Fiske, 1992; James, 1890): Paraphrasing Fiske (1992) and replacing thinking with trusting we argue that “trusting is for doing”. People’s experience of trust constitutes not only a basis for decisions but serves important ends in its own right, enabling people to interact with ease and confidence. People’s experience of trust not only influences peoples’ selection of goals but also influences peoples’ ability to attain those goals once selected. Trust enhances peoples’ ability to effectively influence other people in that people tend to trust people who trust (Williams, 2007, Weber, Malhotra & Murnighan, 2005). Trusting likewise reduces the load on peoples’ information processing capacity, and enables people to more effectively focus on task-interaction enhancing task performance (Schmeichel & Baumeister, 2004). The effects of goals on trust we suggest tend to be automatic, often unconscious and uncontrolled (Bargh & Williams, 2007).