This study examined the effect of verbal and written apologies on trust repair based on competence and integrity after a trust violation. Through three experiments, the empirical results showed that the written apology was more effective than verbal ones a restoring trust for integrity-based trust violations. However, the verbal apology was more effective against competency-based trust violations than a written one. Moreover, the results also showed that perceived trustworthiness played a mediating role between (...) trust violation and trust repair, while positive emotions played a moderating role. Finally, this study provided a general discussion, implications, and suggestions for future research. (shrink)

This study examines the conditions under which apologies help to elicit forgiveness and restore trust following trust violations between leaders and followers. The intentionality and severity of violations are examined in a critical incident study and a laboratory study. The results support a model in which forgiveness mediates the relation of apology quality and trust. More importantly, the moderation–mediation model shows that apology quality influenced forgiveness and subsequent trust following violations that were moderate (...) in severity–intentionality combination. The effect of apologizing affects trust directly without forgiveness when the severity–intentionality combination held minor or extreme intensity. The results suggest a range in which apologies are effective and enrich understanding of the conditions under which trust can be recovered through an apology–forgiveness process in leader–follower relationships. The contribution of the study lies in elucidating that the combination of severity and intentionality of leaders’ trust violations has greater importance than either one separately. (shrink)

Preface: help! my brainchild's been kidnapped! -- Intellectual misconduct: backwards, forward, and sideways -- The world of scholarship: rituals and rewards, norms and departures -- Structural and organizational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Cultural causes of scholarly misconduct -- Individual and situational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Scholarly misconduct as crime -- Criminological theory and scholarly crime -- Implications for theory and research -- Preventing and controlling scholarly crime -- Afterword: against all odds, a code is born.

This paper presents a holistic, contextualised case study of reintegration and trust repair at a UK utilities firm in the wake of its fraud and data manipulation scandal. Drawing upon conceptual frameworks of reintegration and organizational trust repair, we analyze the decisions and actions taken by the company in its efforts to restore trust with its stakeholders. The analysis reveals seven themes on the merits of proposed approaches for reintegration after an integrity violation , and novel insights (...) on the role of organizational identity, “changing of the guard” and cultural reforms alongside procedural modifications. The case further supports the dynamic nature of stakeholder salience across the reintegration process. The study both supports propositions from existing frameworks and suggests novel theoretical extensions for future research. (shrink)

Despite an abundance of research on inter-organizational trust, researchers are only beginning to understand the process of trust deterioration as an inter-organizational phenomenon. This paper presents a case study examining the deteriorating relationship between two international high-tech firms. We surveyed respondents from the supplier firm to identify major elements that reduced the supplier's trust in its customer, using the dimensions of trust identified by Mayer et al. (1995). While violations of ability, integrity, and benevolence all (...) contributed to trust reduction, early violations of trustee benevolence contributed importantly to trust deterioration. Over time, the relationship became "sensitive," and respondents reported many incidents of trust violation. Managers reported primarily integrity- and benevolence-related incidents, while no pattern emerged among operations personnel. We examine the results in light of Hosmer's (1995) ethically-based trust principles. The supplier and customer would likely differ in their opinion of whether the customer was acting "ethically." This suggests that scholars need to examine how many principles can be violated before trust is eliminated, and whether any of the principles are particularly salient in business relationships. (shrink)

Trust not only disposes us to feel betrayed, trust can be betrayed. Understanding what a betrayal of trust is requires understanding how trust can ground an obligation on the part of the trusted person to act specifically as trusted. This essay argues that, since trust cannot ground an appropriate obligation where there is no prior obligation, a betrayal of trust should instead be conceived as the violation of a trust-based obligation to respect an (...) already existing obligation. Two forms of trust are evaluated for their potential to ground such a second-order obligation. One form counts as a gift to the trusted person only because it does not involve an expectation of trustworthiness; the other form cannot count as a gift but confers an honor because it does include an expectation of trustworthiness. Only trust that confers an honor generates a second-order obligation whose violation would be a betrayal of trust. -/- . (shrink)

It is a commonplace that there are limits to the ways we can permissibly treat people, even in the service of good ends. For example, we may not steal someone’s wallet, even if we plan to donate the contents to famine relief, or break a promise to help a colleague move, even if we encounter someone else on the way whose need is somewhat more urgent. In other words, we should observe certain constraints against mistreating people, where a constraint is (...) a moral principle that we should not violate, even when that is the only way to prevent further, similar violations or other, greater evils. But, despite its intuitive appeal, the view that there are constraints has drawn considerable criticism, and attempts to provide a rationale for constraints have been, at best, substantially incomplete. In this paper, I develop a novel rationale for constraints that fills important gaps left by views in the literature. The account helps make sense of constraints by identifying a morally significant relation that we bear to people when, and only when, we observe certain constraints against mistreating them. Put roughly, observing these constraints is a condition for being worthy of a form of trust that I call civic trust, and being worthy of such trust is an essential part of living with others in the sort of harmony that characterizes morally permissible interaction. By focusing, in ways other accounts do not, on the role that observing constraints plays in our psychological lives, this approach not only makes the structure of constraints more intelligible, but also helps us better appreciate the force of our reason to observe constraints, and better understand the kind of moral community to which we should aspire. (shrink)

What does it mean to "trust?" What makes us feel secure enough to place our confidence—even at times our welfare—in the hands of other people? Is it possible to "trust" an institution? What exactly do people mean when they claim to "distrust" their governments? As difficult as it may be to define, trust is essential to the formation and maintenance of a civil society. In Trust and Trustworthiness political scientist Russell Hardin addresses the standard theories of (...) trust and articulates his own new and compelling idea: that much of what we call trust can be best described as "encapsulated interest." Research into the roles of trust in our society has offered a broad range of often conflicting theories. Some theorists maintain that trust is a social virtue that cannot be reduced to strategic self-interest; others claim that trusting another person is ultimately a rational calculation based on information about that person and his or her incentives and motivations. Hardin argues that we place our trust in persons whom we believe to have strong reasons to act in our best interests. He claims that we are correct when we assume that the main incentive of those whom we trust is to maintain a relationship with us—whether it be for reasons of economic benefit or for love and friendship. Hardin articulates his theory using examples from a broad array of personal and social relationships, paying particular attention to explanations of the development of trusting relationships. He also examines trustworthiness and seeks to understand why people may behave in ways that violate their own self-interest in order to honor commitments they have made to others. The book also draws important distinctions between vernacular uses of "trust" and "trustworthiness," contrasting, for example, the type of trust (or distrust) we place in individuals with the trust we place in institutions Trust and Trustworthiness represents the culmination of important new research into the roles of trust in our society; it offers a challenging new voice in the current discourse about the origins of cooperative behavior and its consequences for social and civic life. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust. (shrink)

Among the various methods of deceit, lying is often thought to be a special affront on the grounds that it invites the victim’s trust. Such an explanation is incomplete without an account of the moral significance of trust. This article distinguishes two morally problematic relations to trust, betrayals and abuses, and, appealing to the idea that we should be grateful to be trusted, attempts to explain these wrongs as violations of distinct demands of gratitude for (...) class='Hi'>trust. Only the wrong of abuse, not betrayal, is useful for distinguishing methods of deceit. Although lying commits an abuse of trust, it turns out that it is really the broader category of deceit by means of communication that is special in this way. -/- . (shrink)

It has become almost a cliché to say that we live in a post-truth world; that people of all trades speak with an indifference to truth. Speaking with an indifference to how things really are is famously regarded by Harry Frankfurt as the essence of bullshit. This paper aims to contribute to the philosophical and theoretical pragmatics discussion of bullshit. The aim of the paper is to offer a new theoretical analysis of what bullshit is, one that is more encompassing (...) than Frankfurt’s original characterization. I part ways with Frankfurt in two points. Firstly, I propose that we should not analyze bullshit in intentional terms (i.e. as indifference). Secondly, I propose that we should not analyze it in relation to truth. Roughly put, I propose that bullshit is best characterized as speaking with carelessness toward the evidence for one’s conversational contribution. I bring forward, in the third section, a battery of examples that motivate this characterization. Furthermore, I argue that we can analyze speaking with carelessness toward the evidence in Gricean terms as a violation of the second Quality maxim. I argue that the Quality supermaxim, together with its subordinate maxims, demand that the speaker is truthful (contributes only what she believes to be true) and reliable (has adequate evidence for her contribution). The bullshitter’s main fault lies in being an unreliable interlocutor. I further argue that we should interpret what counts as adequate evidence, as stipulated by the second Quality Maxim, in contextualist terms: the subject matter and implicit epistemic standards determine how much evidence one needs in order to have adequate evidence. I contrast this proposed reading with a subjectivist interpretation of what counts as having adequate evidence and show that they give different predictions. Finally, working with a classic distinction, I argue that we should not understand bullshit as a form of deception but rather as a form of misleading speech. (shrink)

Trust is morally basic. It makes cooperation between persons, to whatever degree, possible. In Chapter One, I define trust as being the relation between people bound by genuine goodwill, competency and vulnerability to each other. ;In Chapter Two, I criticize Thomas Hobbes's understanding of society as founded upon a social contract which exclusively self-interested persons have reason to make in order to escape from the state of nature. I argue that on Hobbes's assumptions about the nature of persons, (...) such a contract cannot be viable. Without the assumption that, prior to the contract, persons have some reason to trust one another, no contract can be expected to be made or survive. ;David Gauthier, who presents a contemporary version of Hobbesian social contract theory in his Morals by Agreement, is vulnerable to a similar argument. In Chapter Three, I argue that given Gauthier's description of persons there does not exist the trust necessary to construct, even hypothetically, the social contract. ;Chapter Four examines the very basic role which trust plays in both personal and civic friendship. I argue that trust is what distinguishes "end friendship" from the instrumental friendships in which we are "used" or taken advantage of by others. I discuss civic friendship and argue that the trust which is basic to it, namely social trust, is a form of trust which can exist between people who are otherwise strangers to one another. ;In Chapter Five I go on to prescribe trust. I argue first, that we should never be untrustworthy, as this implies treating people instrumentally, and hence violates Kant's Categorical Imperative. I argue, however, that we should not always trust, maintaining that trust, for normative purposes, is best understood as an Aristotelian mean, and can be described by the extremes of naivete and cynicism and that we should trust in a way which avoids both these extremes. (shrink)

Over the last decade, and culminating in the 2008 global financial meltdown, there has been an erosion of trust and a concomitant rise of distrust in domestic companies, multinational enterprises, and political economies.In response to this attrition, this article presents three arguments. First, we suggest that trust is the “glue” of any viable political economy, and we propose that the stakes of violating public trust are particularly high in light of the asymmetry between trust and distrust. (...) Second, we identify a constellation of key barriers to overcoming distrust that companies face in the current environment: (1) corporate mind-sets that promote a preoccupation with quantification, hierarchical leadership models, and “blind trust” in authority; (2) the anonymity of core stakeholders; (3) the agency of the media as a driver of the political economy; and (4) firm-centric models of stakeholder relationships.Third, we argue that, notwithstanding these challenges, these phenomena are not fatal and can be addressed through a holistic transformation in corporate culture. Such a transformation might include a shift to collaborative leadership models and replacing authority models with responsibility, a “names and faces” approach to stakeholders through cases and stories, more egalitarian communication exchanges with external stakeholders, and a reprioritization of the firm as a vital element among others within a system rather than the central core of a network.We conclude that the value of trust at the individual, institutional, national, and global levels cannot be overstated. Without a reinvigoration of trust in our political economies, at all levels, the future of an economically vibrant planet is indeed bleak. (shrink)

In the first edition of this Companion, John Dunn remarked that very few modern philosophers considered trust between people ‘a central issue in the theoretical understanding of politics’. Dunn saw this as strange, considering the enormous interest that John Rawls's theory on social justice had invoked. How could a ‘behind the veil of ignorance’ contract work to organize the distribution of goods in society if the agents could not trust each other to honour the contract? Rawls's theory presupposes (...) either that such mutual trust exists or that society can produce institutions that could be relied upon to intervene against agents who violate the contract. (shrink)

In this article we develop and defend what we call the “Trust View” of promissory obligation, according to which making a promise involves inviting another individual to trust one to do something. In inviting her trust, and having the invitation accepted (or at least not rejected), one incurs an obligation to her not to betray the trust that one has invited. The distinctive wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating this obligation. We (...) begin by explicating the core notion of “inviting someone to trust one to do something”, suggesting that it involves signaling to the other individual one's recognition of the importance the relevant action has for her, and one’s willingness to license her to have faith or optimism in one's character with regard to the performance of that action. We then turn to a defense of the Trust View, arguing that it has considerable appeal in its own right, that it is distinct from and superior to three similar accounts (T.M. Scanlon's Assurance View, Judith Jarvis Thomson's Reliance View and David Owens' Authority View), and that several objections to it can be answered. (shrink)

Trust facilitates communication, love, friendship, and co-operation and is fundamentally important to human relationships and personal development. Using examples from daily life, interviews, literature, and film, Govier describes the role of trust in friendship and in family relationships as well as the connection between self-trust, self-respect, and self-esteem. She examines the reasons we trust or distrust others and ourselves, and the expectations and vulnerabilities that accompany those attitudes. But trust should not be blind. Acknowledging that (...) distrust is often warranted, Govier describes strategies for coping with distrust and designing workable relationships despite it. She also examines situations in which the integrity of interpersonal relationships has been violated by serious breaches of trust and explores themes of forgiveness, reconciliation, and the restoration of trust. By encouraging reflection on our own attitudes of trust and distrust, this fascinating book points the way to a better understanding of our relationships and ourselves. (shrink)

Jared D. Harris, Brian T. Moriarty, and Andrew C. Wicks’ recent book collects eleven chapters by well-known scholars on the question of public trust in business, published along with an introduction and conclusion by the editors. But the collection doesn’t make progress on what this reviewer takes to be the two essential questions. This review outlines those questions and then addresses a further, more technical difficulty with the conceptualizations of trust at work across the chapters. The central theme (...) here is that business as an institution has obligations to society; we—the public—trust business to act on those obligations; and when business violates those obligations our trust is betrayed. The essays collected in this volume do not directly address the question of what those obligations are, but this should be the starting point for an investigation of public trust in business. (shrink)

If voting systems are to be trusted, they not only need to preserve both secrecy (if requested) and accuracy, but the mechanisms that preserve these features should be transparent, in the sense of being both cognitively understandable and accessible. Electronic voting systems, much as they promise accuracy in counting, and on top of being criticized for their insufficient protection of secrecy, violate the transparency requirement.

This paper discusses trust between stakeholders, with special emphasis on a new theory from the social sciences and ends up by focusing on a multidimensional dilemma between trust and control. Harald Grimen, an influential philosopher, social scientist and ethicist in Norway, defined trust as a communicative action between a trust-giver and a trust-receiver, characterized by the giver taking few precautions. This first part of his theory provides the basis for a specified interpretation of trust (...) as a collective undertaking among stakeholders in modern organizations, such as financial companies, constituting chains of trust. The phenomenon of cooperation is fundamental in such chains. Grimen’s theoretical focus on trust as a single action, and on the chain of cooperation as several interconnected actions, represents a corrective to the psychological and individualistic profile of mainstream research on trust and converges toward principal-agent theories. The paper uses Grimen’s theory to work out a hypothesis about a chain of trust between stakeholders in the financial industry, promoting a multi-efficient cooperation between them. The multi-efficiency of chains of trust is also discussed in connection with the risk of violating different ethical norms. The risk brings to focus the corresponding need for chains of control as a means to reduce the risk of violations of norms. But the chain of control has not only this advantage, but also a disadvantage. The inefficiency of chains of control is a severe hindrance to the efficiency of the chain of trust, even if it reduces the risk of violation of norms. The paper ends by underscoring a multidimensional dilemma typical for cooperation between stakeholders in modern organizations, i.e. the fundamental dilemma between the advantages and disadvantages of both chains of trust and chains of control. (shrink)

‘Dirty hands’ scenarios require politicians to commit moral violations to achieve worthwhile goals. To mitigate the harm done to the fiduciary relationship underlying a democratic society, I argue for the adoption of two procedures: retrospective accountability and special oversight committees. I also offer three criteria for a much-required political ethic.

‘Dirty hands’ scenarios require politicians to commit moral violations to achieve worthwhile goals. To mitigate the harm done to the fiduciary relationship underlying a democratic society, I argue for the adoption of two procedures: retrospective accountability and special oversight committees. I also offer three criteria for a much-required political ethic.

‘Dirty hands’ scenarios require politicians to commit moral violations to achieve worthwhile goals. To mitigate the harm done to the fiduciary relationship underlying a democratic society, I argue for the adoption of two procedures: retrospective accountability and special oversight committees. I also offer three criteria for a much-required political ethic.

This paper evaluates the arguments against physician assisted suicide which contend that it violates the integrity of medicine and the physician-patient relation; i.e. that it contradicts the goal of seeking health and healing, violates an absolute prohibition against killing, and undermines the patient's trust in the physician. These arguments against physician assisted suicide (1) misuse notions of teleology and teleological explanation; (2) rely on inappropriate notions of "ideal medicine", for which death is a defeat; (3) turn on a highly (...) selective reading for the Hippocratic tradition; and (4) are unacceptably paternalistic. Keywords: Hippocratic ethics, integrity in medicine, physician assisted suicide, physician-patient relation CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

When trust is violated, can it ever be recovered? Alison Jacobs needs brain surgery and places ultimate trust in her sister's husband, Grant Kaplan, a world-renowned neurosurgeon and expert in treating her condition. But Grant is hiding a dark secret which threatens the outcome: an addiction to prescription pills. As Alison struggles to rebuild her life, Grant's daughter, Sadie, spends more time with a new friend. Frustrated that her parents exclude her from the conversations about her beloved aunt, (...) Sadie makes increasingly risky choices which could endanger not only her, but her entire family. Alison is also harboring her own secret -- an extramarital affair with a woman. Her close call with mortality spurs her to take a closer look at her marriage, explore her newfound sexuality, and figure out what she wants for her future. How will she rebuild her life and move forward? Can she find a way to repair her broken relationship with her only sister? Secrets swirling around drug use and sexual identity must be dealt with in order for the family to learn to trust each other again. -- Goodreads. (shrink)

Higher education institutions are mining and analyzing student data to effect educational, political, and managerial outcomes. Done under the banner of “learning analytics,” this work can—and often does—surface sensitive data and information about, inter alia, a student’s demographics, academic performance, offline and online movements, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and social network. With these data, institutions and third parties are able to describe student life, predict future behaviors, and intervene to address academic or other barriers to student success (however defined). Learning (...) analytics, consequently, raise serious issues concerning student privacy, autonomy, and the appropriate flow of student data. We argue that issues around privacy lead to valid questions about the degree to which students should trust their institution to use learning analytics data and other artifacts (algorithms, predictive scores) with their interests in mind. We argue that higher education institutions are paradigms of information fiduciaries. As such, colleges and universities have a special responsibility to their students. In this article, we use the information fiduciary concept to analyze cases when learning analytics violate an institution’s responsibility to its students. (shrink)

Trust is a complex attitude that has emotional, cognitive and moral dimensions. A difficulty to reduce trust to a simple emotional attitude is that trust raises normative pressures: if someone asks you to be trusted you feel the normative pressure of not letting him or her down, and if someone trusts you, you feel the normative pressure of honoring his or her trust. These normative pressures seem to have an irreducibly social character: pressures are effective insofar (...) as they may raise emotions of shame in those who violate the norm of trust and resentment and contempt in those who are victim of the violation. In this paper I will investigate the relation between the affective dimension of these normative pressures and their moral dimension by arguing that an important moral asymmetry exists between the duty to trust and the duty to be trustful. (shrink)

Serious ethical violations in medicine, such as sexual abuse, criminal prescribing of opioids, and unnecessary surgeries, directly harm patients and undermine trust in the profession of medicine. We review the literature on violations in medicine and present an analysis of 280 cases. Nearly all cases involved repeated instances of intentional wrongdoing, by males in nonacademic medical settings, with oversight problems and a selfish motive such as financial gain or sex. More than half of cases involved a wrongdoer (...) with a suspected personality disorder or substance use disorder. Despite clear patterns, no factors provide readily observable red flags, making prevention difficult. Early identification and intervention in cases requires significant policy shifts that prioritize the safety of patients over physician interests in privacy, fair processes, and proportionate disciplinary actions. We explore a series of 10 questions regarding policy, oversight, discipline, and education options. Satisfactory answers to these questions will require input from diverse stakeholders to help society negotiate effective and ethically balanced solutions. (shrink)

Punishment stands in need of justification because it involves intentionally harming offenders. Trust-based retributivists attempt to justify punishment by appeal to the offender’s violation of the victim’s trust, maintaining that the state is entitled to punish offenders as a means of restoring conditions of trust to their pre-offense levels. I argue that trust-based retributivism fails on two counts. First, it entails the permissibility of punishing the legally innocent and fails to justify the punishment of some offenders. (...) Second, it cannot satisfactorily explain why it is morally permissible for the government to intentionally harm offenders. (shrink)

We review the literature on how perceiving an AI making mistakes violates trust and how such violations might be repaired. In doing so, we discuss the role played by various forms of algorithmic transparency in the process of trust repair, including explanations of algorithms, uncertainty estimates, and performance metrics.

A social partner’s emotions communicate important information about their motives and intentions. However, people may discount emotional information that they believe their partner has regulated with the strategic intention of exerting social influence. Across two studies, we investigated interpersonal effects of communicated guilt and perceived strategic regulation in trust games. Results showed that communicated guilt mitigated negative effects of trust violations on interpersonal judgements and behaviour. Further, perceived strategic regulation reduced guilt’s positive effects. These findings suggest that (...) people take emotion-regulation motives into account when responding to emotion communication. (shrink)

Increasingly, bioethicists defend informed consent as a safeguard for trust in caretakers and medical institutions. This paper discusses an ‘ideal type’ of that move. What I call the trust-promotion argument for informed consent states:1. Social trust, especially trust in caretakers and medical institutions, is necessary so that, for example, people seek medical advice, comply with it, and participate in medical research.2. Therefore, it is usually wrong to jeopardise that trust.3. Coercion, deception, manipulation and other (...) class='Hi'>violations of standard informed consent requirements seriously jeopardise that trust.4. Thus, standard informed consent requirements are justified.This article describes the initial promise of this argument, then identifies challenges to it. As I show, the value of trust fails to account for some commonsense intuitions about informed consent. We should revise the argument, commonsense morality, or both. (shrink)

Workers can be fired from jobs, citizens sent to jail, and adolescents more likely to experience depression, all because of algorithms. Algorithms have considerable impacts on our lives. To increase user satisfaction and trust, the most common proposal from academics and developers is to increase the transparency of algorithmic design. While there is a large body of literature on algorithmic transparency, the impact of unethical data collection practices is less well understood. Currently, there is limited research on the factors (...) that affect users’ trust in data collection practices and algorithmic transparency. In this research, we explore the relative impact of both factors as they relate to important outcome measures such as user’s trust, comfort level, and moral acceptability. We conducted two pilot studies to learn what real users consider to be ethical and unethical data collection practices, as well as high and low transparency for algorithms. We then used these findings in a 2 × 2 design to examine how transparency and the acceptability of data collection practices impact users’ acceptance, comfort, and trust in algorithms. Our results suggest that the singular emphasis on algorithmic transparency may be misplaced. Given the difference in their impact to increase acceptance, trust, and user satisfaction, a more effective strategy would be to also understand and abide by users’ views of ethical data collection practices. (shrink)

The present study explores the discursive practice of the hospitality industry in addressing competence-based, benevolence-based, and integrity-based accusations of trust violation made by dissatisfied customers on TripAdvisor. Authentic negative online reviews written by dissatisfied customers and the corresponding responses by hotel management downloaded directly from TripAdvisor are analyzed qualitatively with Nvivo10. Results show that hotel management has the strongest preference for apology, followed by implicit denial and then explicit denial when dealing with the three different types of accusations of (...) trust violation. The findings will enhance our understanding of trust and its repair, and benefit hospitality practitioners responsible for handling online criticisms and complaints. (shrink)

Here I briefly discuss some comparative data on social play behaviour in hope of broadening the array of species in which researchers attempt to study animal morality. I am specifically concerned with the notion of ‘behaving fairly'. In the term ‘behaving fairly’ I use as a working guide the notion that animals often have social expectations when they engage in various sorts of social encounters the violation of which constitutes being treated unfairly because of a lapse in social etiquette. I (...) will cash this out below in my discussion of social play behaviour. (shrink)

Scholars have assumed that trust is fragile: difficult to build and easily broken. We demonstrate, however, that in some cases trust is surprisingly robust—even when harmful deception is revealed, some individuals maintain high levels of trust in the deceiver. In this paper, we describe how implicit theories moderate the harmful effects of revealed deception on a key component of trust: perceptions of integrity. In a negotiation context, we show that people who hold incremental theories reduce perceptions (...) of their counterpart’s integrity after they learn that they were deceived, whereas people who hold entity theories maintain their first impressions after learning that they were deceived. Implicit theories influenced how targets interpreted evidence of deception. Individuals with incremental theories encoded revealed deception as an ethical violation; individuals with entity theories did not. These findings highlight the importance of implicit beliefs in understanding how trust changes over time. (shrink)

Sissela Bok's1 and Torbjörn Tännsjö's2 writings on trust and informed consent were sources of inspiration for my article.3 It is gratifying to have a chance to respond to their thoughtful comments.Bok concurs with my scepticism that the ‘trust-promotion argument for informed consent’ can successfully generate commonsense morality's full set of informed consent norms. But she finds that argument even more wanting, perhaps so wanting as to be unworthy of critical attention. What she seems to find particularly objectionable is (...) the fact that the argument treats all social trust as valuable. For Bok, misplaced trust in health practitioners who are deceitful or violate patients’ other rights lacks any value whatsoever. There isn't even a pro tanto duty in favour of promoting it.My own inclination is to say that nearly all trust has some social value, if only thanks to its tendency to promote social stability or its tendency to promote medical adherence . But often, trust also tends to generate bad outcomes, and in many cases of misplaced trust, that tendency will make its value negative on balance. Still, in my view, …. (shrink)

This paper examines one nascent entrepreneurial endeavour intended by Canada's Stem Cell Network to catalyze the commercialization of stem cell research: the creation of a company called "Aggregate Therapeutics". We argue that this initiative, in its current configuration, is likely to result in a breach of public trust owing to three inter-related concerns: conflicts of interest; corporate influence on the university research agenda; and the failure to provide some form of direct return for the public's substantial tax dollar investment. (...) These concerns are common to many efforts to commercialize academic science but are rendered particularly acute in this case given the therapeutic promise of stem cell research and the considerable number of resources related to stem cell research in Canada, which Aggregate Therapeutics is expected to pool. We do, however, believe that the company can be altered to guard against a violation of the public's trust, and so we present concrete modifications to its structure, which we contend should be given immediate consideration. (shrink)

Prior studies have found that emojis can contribute to rebuilding customers’ trust when after-sale staff apologize to them, but studies on the different types of emojis and their different levels of effectiveness in rebuilding trust are still needed. In this paper, we explore the different types and frequencies of emojis and their effectiveness in rebuilding trust based on commercial discourses. Our data are collected from conversations between after-sale staff and customers during Ali Trademanager after-sale service. We find (...) three types of emojis frequently used when after-sale staff apologizing to customers: face-related emojis, gesture-related emojis, and object-related emojis. Moreover, face-related emojis are the most frequently used, as their nature is to express emotion and attitude. The most effective emojis are the whimper emoji and kiss emoji, which are used by after-sale staff for sajiao (literally, ‘playing cute’). On the other hand, we show that the least effective emojis are the sorry emoji and happy emoji, which are deemed insincere because they violate the quality maxim and quantity maxim in the Cooperative Principle. This paper thus contributes to understanding the nature and function of emojis in commercial communication. (shrink)

Leadership humor is widely used in management practice and has aroused extensive discussion in academia. On account of the two-sided influence of leader humor on employees, its double-edged sword effect on employee behavior has been put more emphasis. As a benign violation of organizational norms and a kind of pro-organizational violation, respectively, both Leadership humor and employee bootleg innovation have the characteristics of violating organizational norms, but few studies have examined the relationship between them. Based on benign violation theory and (...) social cognition theory, this study conducted a two-stage questionnaire survey and statistical-econometric analysis of 324 employees in 23 IT and manufacturing technology companies in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, Beijing, and Shanghai, China. It not only examined the relationship between leadership humor and employee bootleg innovation but also tested a moderated mediation model. Results show that leadership humor is positively correlated with psychological empowerment and employee bootleg innovation, namely, leadership humor indirectly and positively affects employee bootleg innovation through psychological empowerment. Moreover, the indirect effect is positively regulated by leadership emotional trust. The higher the emotional trust of employees to leadership, the stronger the mediating role of psychological empowerment between leader humor and bootleg innovation behavior. The study enriches the existing path of research on the double-edged impact of leader humor on employee behavior, expands the boundary conditions of the relationship between empowered cognitive mediation and employee bootleg innovation and provides enlightenments for Chinese leaders to effectively apply the tool of leader humor. (shrink)

Morality is an abstract consideration, and language is an important regulator of abstract thought. In instances of moral ambiguity, individuals may pay particular attention to matters of interactional justice. Politeness in language has been linked to greater perceptions of social distance, which we contend is instrumental in regulating attitudes toward a brand. We posit that politeness in a brand’s advertising will impact consumers who are attuned to violations of interactional justice [i.e., those with low belief in a just world (...) ]. In three studies, we demonstrate that the politeness used in advertising as well as consumers’ individual differences in BJW affect judgments and attitudes toward brands. Specifically, individuals with a low just world belief are more likely to harbor negative attitudes towards a brand with ethically ambiguous business practices if the language used in advertising is impersonal than when the language used in advertising is personal. Importantly, for individuals with a low BJW, lowered trust due to the advertisement’s language mediated the relationship between politeness and attitudes toward the brand. Theoretical and managerial implications of this research are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines one nascent entrepreneurial endeavour intended by Canada's Stem Cell Network to catalyze the commercialization of stem cell research: the creation of a company called "Aggregate Therapeutics". We argue that this initiative, in its current configuration, is likely to result in a breach of public trust owing to three inter-related concerns: conflicts of interest; corporate influence on the university research agenda; and the failure to provide some form of direct return for the public's substantial tax dollar investment. (...) These concerns are common to many efforts to commercialize academic science but are rendered particularly acute in this case given the therapeutic promise of stem cell research and the considerable number of resources related to stem cell research in Canada, which Aggregate Therapeutics is expected to pool. We do, however, believe that the company can be altered to guard against a violation of the public's trust, and so we present concrete modifications to its structure, which we contend should be given immediate consideration. (shrink)

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The emergence of modern science is a history of disentanglement, as science detached itself first from religion and then from philosophy. Jennifer Trusted in Physics and Metaphysics argues that science -- in its haste to tear itself from its historical links -- has neglected the various roles religious and philosophical ideas have actually played and continue to play in scientific thinking. This book seeks to redress the balance by exploring how metaphysical beliefs have functioned in the history of scientific inquiry (...) and discovery. By examining the history of science from the eleventh century to the present, this book shows how religious and mystical beliefs, as well as philosophical speculation, have had a considerable role in motivating scientists and inspiring scientific inquiry. Physics and Metaphysics presupposes no technical knowledge of either philosophy or science, and as such it is an ideal introduction to science and the importantforces that have shaped its history and ideas. (shrink)

Jennifer Trusted's new book argues that metaphysical beliefs are essential for scientific inquiry. The theories, presuppositions and beliefs that neither science nor everyday experience can justify are the realm of metaphysics, literally `beyond physics'. These basic beliefs form a framework for our activities and can be discovered in science, common sense and religion. By examining the history of science from the eleventh century to the present, this book shows how religious and mystical beliefs, as well as philosophical speculation have had (...) a considerable role in motivating scientists and inspiring scientific inquiry. _Physics and Metaphysics_ presupposes no technical knowledge of either philosophy or science. It is an ideal introduction to science and the important forces that have shaped its history and ideas. (shrink)

This book was written for those who have a general interest in how the concepts of personal freedom and determinism affect their daily lives and their dealings with other people.

Jennifer Trusted's new book argues that metaphysical beliefs are essential for scientific inquiry. The theories, presuppositions and beliefs that neither science nor everyday experience can justify are the realm of metaphysics, literally `beyond physics'. These basic beliefs form a framework for our activities and can be discovered in science, common sense and religion. By examining the history of science from the eleventh century to the present, this book shows how religious and mystical beliefs, as well as philosophical speculation have had (...) a considerable role in motivating scientists and inspiring scientific inquiry. _Physics and Metaphysics_ presupposes no technical knowledge of either philosophy or science. It is an ideal introduction to science and the important forces that have shaped its history and ideas. (shrink)