Promises and Lies: Restoring Violated Trust

Via an article in the Economic Times, I came across this interesting study called "Promises, Lies and Restoring Trust" done by Schweitzer, Hershey and Bradlow of the Wharton School at UPenn.

One would assume that once trust has been broken it would take a really long time for that trust to be rebuilt, the study shows that this is not really the case. Broken trust can be rebuilt by assurances that the violator then sticks by. This is not only by actions, but "words do matter" as well. However, if the violation of trust has been accompanied by deception, then rebuilding takes much longer, and must be accompanied by actions and not just words. Even so, in this case, trust may never fully be restored. As Bradlow says, "It’s okay to screw me over, but don’t deceive me as well. If you screw me over and lie about it, it’s going to take even longer to recover from it.”

Often I have a golden rule when signing contracts: would I be doing business with this person or company even in the absence of this written contract? If yes, then the contract is simply to cover our respective asses in case things go horribly wrong, but it's not something that will really prevent one party from screwing over the other party if they really want to. Which is why, beyond a simple non-disclosure agreement, we do not have employees sign any binding contracts or agreements. If we don't trust them enough to have them on board, then we probably shouldn't be having them on board in any case. This might change however with more senior management positions, where contracts would explicitly state their responsibilities towards profits and results.