Jennifer R. Dunn’s research while affiliated with Michigan State University and other places

Organizations often expect employees to collaborate with and trust the same coworkers with whom they compete for promotions and raises. This paper explores how social comparisons in self-relevant achievement domains influence affective and cognitive trust. We find that both upward and downward social comparisons harm trust. Upward comparisons harm affective trust and downward comparisons harm cognitive trust. We find no benefits of upward comparisons on cognitive trust, and we find no benefits of downward comparisons on affective trust.

Negotiators often bargain on behalf of others. In many cases, these constituents set the goals they want their negotiators to achieve at the table. We argue that prior evidence for superior results of promotion-focused negotiators may not hold when goals are set by others. We report the results of a study in which negotiators were provided with external goals that were difficult to achieve in the given zone of agreement. We found that prevention-focused individuals planned better, and their dyads persisted longer in the negotiation than those with a promotion focus. Persistence led to higher joint outcomes for prevention-focused dyads than promotion-focused dyads. In addition, we found that agreeableness only affected individual financial outcomes for promotion-focused dyads, where high agreeableness led to poorer outcomes.

Abstract ,Personal reputations are an important factor in trust. Prior work has focused on how favorable reputations lead to higher trust than unfavorable ones. In this paper, I examine the effects of other reputation dimensions on trust, specifically reputation breadth (how widespread the reputation is) and reputation consensus (how well agreed upon the reputation is). In two studies, I present participants with reputation information that varies in favorableness, breadth and / or consensus. I find that, for positive reputations, both breadth and consensus increase trust. For negative reputations, consensus reduces trust, but breadthonly has weak effects on trust.

In this chapter, we develop a model of envy and unethical decision making. We postulate that unfavorable comparisons will induce envy in outperformed coworkers, who are subsequently motivated to engage in unethical acts to harm the envied target. In particular, we consider the differential effects of unfavorable individual-level and unfavorable group-level social comparisons on attitudes and norms for engaging in social undermining behaviors. Envy is a self-sanctioned emotion and often difficult to detect. Even so, envy is likely to be both prevalent in and harmful to organizations. Organizational culture may play an important role in moderating the prevalence and consequences of envy within organizations. For example, managerial actions designed to boost organizational identity may significantly curtail envy within their organization.

The authors report results from 5 experiments that describe the influence of emotional states on trust. They found that incidental emotions significantly influence trust in unrelated settings. Happiness and gratitude--emotions with positive valence--increase trust, and anger--an emotion with negative valence--decreases trust. Specifically, they found that emotions characterized by other-person control (anger and gratitude) and weak control appraisals (happiness) influence trust significantly more than emotions characterized by personal control (pride and guilt) or situational control (sadness). These findings suggest that emotions are more likely to be misattributed when the appraisals of the emotion are consistent with the judgment task than when the appraisals of the emotion are inconsistent with the judgment task. Emotions do not influence trust when individuals are aware of the source of their emotions or when individuals are very familiar with the trustee.

We demonstrate that incidental emotions (e.g. anger stemming from an argument with your spouse) influence trust in unrelated settings (e.g. the likelihood of trusting a co-worker). Incidental happiness and gratitude increase trust, and incidental anger decreases trust. Other-person control appraisals mediate this relationship, and trustee familiarity moderates this relationship.

We explore the role of incidental feelings of confidence on ethical decision making. Prior work has conceptualized ethical decision-making as a product of contextual and individual factors, but largely ignored the role that emotions might play in ethical decision making. We hypothesize that incidental feelings will systematically influence ethical judgment and decision making. Specifically, we expect people experiencing incidental confidence to be less likely to engage in unethical behavior than people feeling a lack of confidence. We propose two studies to explore this relationship. Consistent with our hypotheses, results from our pilot study find that unconfident participants rated the same unethical behaviors as more acceptable than their confident counterparts. Problem Introduction

Abstract We report results from five experiments that describe the influence of emotional states on trust. We find that incidental emotions significantly influence trust in unrelated settings. Happiness and gratitude, emotions with positive valence, increase trust, and anger, an emotion with negative valence, decreases trust. Specifically, we find that emotions characterized by other-person control (anger and gratitude) and weak control appraisals (happiness) influence trust significantly more than emotions characterized by personal control (pride and guilt) or situational control (sadness). These findings suggest that emotions may be more likely to be misattributed when the appraisalsof the emotion areconsistent with the judgment task than when the appraisalsof the emotionare inconsistent with the judgment task. Salience of the emotion’s cause and target familiarity moderate the relationship between incidental emotions and trust. Emotions do not influence trust when individuals are aware of the source of their emotions or when,individuals are very familiar with the trustee. Emotion and Trust,3 Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust