ABSTRACT

Existing relationship research has interpreted low trust as being equivalent to high distrust and high trust as the evidence of low distrust, which has failed to capture the full scope of the functions of trust and distrust in organization–public relationships. Recent research in this area suggests that trust and distrust might simultaneously exist during relational interactions and might play uniquely positive and negative functions in certain social contexts. The main purpose of this study was to offer a new insight in trust–distrust research by providing distinctions in conceptualization and operationalization between trust and distrust. This study also empirically tested the functions of four pairings of trust and distrust on two core public relations concepts (i.e., symmetrical communication and public engagement). The results from the surveys (N = 704; in 20 companies) of US consumers showed sound discriminant validity of trust and distrust. Further, the statistical results revealed that symmetrical communication and public engagement were most strongly associated with the high trust and high distrust pairing, supporting the utilities of distrust in public relations and the coexistence of trust and distrust in social interactions.

摘要

现有的关系研究已将低信任等同于高度不信任，而将高信任视为低不信任的证据，这未能充分体现组织-公共关系中信任和不信任的全部功能。最近在该领域的研究表明，信任和不信任可能在关系交互过程中同时存在，并且可能在某些社会环境中发挥独特的积极和消极作用。这项研究的主要目的是通过在信任和不信任之间的概念化和可操作性方面进行区分，从而提供一个对信任－不信任研究的新见解。这项研究还对两个核心公共关系概念（即对称沟通和公众参与）上的信任和不信任四对配对的功能进行了经验检验。N  = 704；美国消费者中有20家公司）显示出信任和不信任的有效判别力。此外，统计结果表明，对称的交流和公众参与与高度信任和高度不信任配对最相关，这支持了公共关系中不信任的效用以及社会互动中信任和不信任的共存。