Causal Attribution to other People and Expected Performance: The Mediational Role of Interpersonal Trust

Abstract

An experiment investigated the proposal that, when causal attribution over a performance is to the voluntary help of other people that person's expected performance is mediated by his interpersonal trust. For trusting persons causal attribution to other people implies consistency between past performance and future expectancies, whereas for those low in trust such consistency is not implied. 36 students in introductory psychology participated in the study which manipulated interpersonal trust (high/low) and importance of performance (high/low) in a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design. Subjects were led to believe that their performance would be largely affected by another person. The subjects' expected performance was the dependent variable. Results supported the proposed mediating effect of interpersonal trust on expected performance following attribution of causality to other people.