Research Note---Trust Is in the Eye of the Beholder: A Vignette Study of Postevent Behavioral Controls' Effects on Individual Trust in Virtual Teams

  • Authors:

  • Alan R. Dennis;Lionel P. Robert;Aaron M. Curtis;Stacy T. Kowalczyk;Bryan K. Hasty

  • Affiliations:

  • Operations and Decision Technologies, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405;School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109;Computer and Information Sciences Department, College of Business, Computing and Government, Brigham Young University, Hawaii, Laie, Hawaii 96762;School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405;Department of Systems and Engineering Management, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio 45433

  • Venue:
  • Information Systems Research
  • Year:
  • 2012

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Research in face-to-face teams shows conflicting results about the impact of behavioral controls on trust; some research shows that controls increase the salience of good behavior, which increases trust while other research shows that controls increase the salience of poor behavior that decreases trust. The only study in virtual teams, which examined poorly functioning teams, found that controls increased the salience of poor behavior, which decreased trust. We argue that in virtual teams behavioral controls amplify the salience of all behaviors (positive and negative) and that an individual's selective perception bias influences how these behaviors are interpreted. Thus the link from behavioral controls to trust is more complex than first thought. We conducted a 2 × 2 experiment, varying the use of behavioral controls (controls, no controls) and individual team member behaviors (reneging behaviors designed to reduce trust beliefs and fulfilling behaviors designed to increase trust beliefs). We found that behavioral controls did amplify the salience of all behaviors; however, contrary to what we expected, this actually weakened the impact of reneging and fulfilling behaviors on trust. We believe that completing a formal evaluation increased empathy and the awareness of context in which the behaviors occurred and thus mitigated extreme perceptions. We also found that behavioral controls increased the selective perception bias which induced participants to see the behaviors their disposition to trust expected rather than the behaviors that actually occurred.