I’m Just a Trusting Person”: Antecedents and Consequences of Trusting Identity

Abstract

The trust literature has largely coalesced around the notion of trustor as data collector—a passive observer whose trusting intentions and behaviors are shaped by the trustee’s trustworthiness. This assumption conflicts with the broader psychology and management literatures, which acknowledge that people’s behaviors and intentions are guided by a sense of who they are. In this paper, we introduce trusting identity to address this oversimplification of the trustor. We draw on identity process theory to suggest that people strive to satisfy trusting identity motives by living out their trusting identity—and that trusting identity should lead to anticipatory pride and anticipatory guilt when considering trusting another person. Those anticipatory emotions should result in trust and, ultimately, risk taking. We test our hypotheses using two pre-registered studies: a multi-wave field study and an experiment. Taken together, our results show the importance of introducing the conceptualization of trustor as identity enactor to the trust literature.

 About the speaker

Professor Baer's research explores alternative perspectives on trust in the workplace, including some drawbacks of both trusting others and being trusted. His research has appeared in several top management journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Personnel Psychology. Professor Baer’s research and consulting has included work with a variety of organizations from the U.S. and abroad, including the transportation industry in England; accounting in Ireland; manufacturing in China and Australia; R&D and public utilities in India; healthcare, apparel, food, and education in the United States; and multiple government organizations. His research has been covered by media outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, PBS, NPR, Business Insider, FastCompany, Psychology Today, Men's Health, and New York Magazine.

In 2020, Mike received the W. P. Carey Dean's Early-Career Research Award, which is given annually to one faculty member in the college for scholarly productivity. In 2022, he received the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award; in 2024, he received the Professional MBA Excellence in Teaching Award.

Dr. Baer is the Editor-in-Chief at Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. He previously served at the journal as an associate editor.

Prior to joining academia, Professor Baer worked in the construction industry, as well as in publishing and online education.