It hurts both ways: How social comparisons harm affective and cognitive trust

Abstract

Organizations often expect employees to collaborate with and trust the same coworkers with whom they compete for promotions and raises. This paper explores how social comparisons in self-relevant achievement domains influence affective and cognitive trust. We find that both upward and downward social comparisons harm trust. Upward comparisons harm affective trust and downward comparisons harm cognitive trust. We find no benefits of upward comparisons on cognitive trust, and we find no benefits of downward comparisons on affective trust.