ABSTRACT
It is hard to envision social relationships that would not require some level of trust between parties to function effectively. Regardless of whether these are relationships between individuals, group members, organizations or linkages across those levels (e.g. individual–employing organization), regardless of whether these are work or non-work relationship, regardless of whether these are short-term or longer-term relationships, arguably all relationships build on trust between parties to be effective (cf. Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012). Not surprisingly then, trust is a concept studied widely in the social and behavioural sciences (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt & Camerer, 1998). The jumping off point for the current discussion of trust is that in this impressive body of work there is such an emphasis on trust as a cognitive phenomenon that the role of affective processes in trust is under-investigated and, I would contend, underestimated. The idea that one would trust, or distrust, someone because one has “a good feeling” about the person, or a “bad feeling” about the person seems completely natural; yet, this idea is essentially absent from the empirical work on trust.
