感知社会善念对信任修复的促进:社会距离与时间距离的调节作用

The Impact of Perceived Social Mindfulness on Trust Repair: The Moderating Role of Social Distance and Temporal Distance

从信任修复的时间阶段模型来看,以往研究主要探讨了信任违背发生后的修复策略及效果,而鲜有研究从违背前的视角对此展开探索。为检验社会善念能否作为信任修复的“事前”策略及其修复效果的边界条件,本研究采用Somi范式操纵违背方的社会善念,通过让信任方完成信任博弈游戏来考察其感知到的社会善念对信任修复的效果及社会距离与时间距离在其中发挥的调节作用。实验1结果表明,感知社会善念有助于促进受损信任的修复,感知高(vs.低)社会善念的被试修复效果更好;实验2发现社会距离调节了感知社会善念对信任修复的影响,面对社会距离远(vs.近)者的信任违背,感知到高社会善念的被试有更好的修复效果;实验3不仅再次验证了前两个实验的发现,还进一步发现时间距离调节了社会距离对感知社会善念与信任修复关系的调节作用,即当违背方回应时间距离短,且其是社会距离远的陌生人时,感知高社会善念的被试修复效果更好,当违背方回应时间距离长,且其是社会距离近的朋友时,感知高社会善念的被试修复效果更好。由此可见,违背发生前信任方感知到违背方的社会善念能在一定程度上修复受损信任,但其效果受到社会距离与时间距离的制约。这些发现对未来探讨信任修复的事前策略及拓展社会善念理论的实践应用均有一定启示意义。

Trust exists in all social activities. It is fundamentally important to the establishment, maintenance, and development of social relations.However, trust is fragile, and the damage of trust will bring negative consequences to individuals, groups, and societies. Therefore, how to repair damaged trust has become one of the most important but unsolved problems in the field. From the perspective of the time phase model of trust repair,previous studies mainly discussed the repair strategies and their effects after the occurrence of trust violation, while few studies explored the trust repair strategies before the occurrence of trust violation from the perspective of prevention. To explore whether social mindfulness can be a pre-strategy of trust repair and the boundary conditions of its repairing effect, this study used the Somi paradigm to manipulate the social mindfulness of violators, and used the trust game paradigm to investigate the effect of perceived social mindfulness on trust repair and the moderating effects of social distance and temporal distance. The trust game paradigm and the Somi paradigm were run in the computer.The study consisted of three experiments. In experiment 1, a single-factor within-subject experiment design was used to explore the impact of perceived social mindfulness on trust repair. The results showed that perceived social mindfulness can promote the repair of damaged trust, and the effectiveness of trust repair was greater when trustor perceived high(vs. low) social mindfulness from the violator. In experiment 2, a 2(social distance:near/far) ×2(perceived social mindfulness: high/low) mixed experimental design was used to explore the impact of perceived social mindfulness on trust repair under different social distances. The results showed that social distance moderated the effect of perceived social mindfulness on trust repair,and the effectiveness of repairing for perceived high social mindfulness was greater when the violator was a stranger. Experiment 3 used a mixed experimental design of 2(social distance: near/far) ×2(temporal distance: short/long) ×2(perceived social mindfulness: high/low) to explore the impact of perceived social mindfulness on trust repairing under different social distances and temporal distances. This experiment not only reconfirmed the findings of the experiment 1 and 2, but also found that temporal distance moderated the moderating effect of social distance on the relation between perceived social mindfulness and trust repair. Specifically, the repairing effectiveness of perceived high social mindfulness was greater when the violator, who was stranger, responded in one week, and when the violator, who was a friend, responded in one year.Thus, the trustor perceived the social mindfulness of the violator before the occurrence of trust violation can repair the damaged trust to some extents, but the effectiveness of repairing was not only moderated by social distance, but further moderated by temporal distance. These findings enrich the previous research on trust repair from the perspective of “pro-strategy”, and have implications for future research on the pre-strategy of trust repair and the application of social mindfulness theory.