Trust and reciprocity in social interactions: A correlational study

Pages: 1310-1314
Surbhi Kumar (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)

Trust plays a key role in successful goal pursuits and sustaining relationships in everyday life. Contrarily decline of trust creates barriers in communication and interferes with the smooth functioning in interpersonal settings. With this in view, the present study attempts to locate the theme of trust in psychological discourse and empirically examine the mediating role of trust in social interactions particularly reciprocity. To this end, data was collected on measures of trust, reciprocity, self-construal and self-other inclusiveness on a sample of 80 participants and then analysed. The study proposed a two-pronged conceptualisation of trust involving self-trust and social trust. Self-trust has been seen to be positively correlated with positive reciprocity, independent self-construal and self-other inclusiveness and social trust has been seen to be positively correlated with interdependent self-construal and negatively correlated with negative reciprocity.