Social scientists have long understood that when people are smart and skilled, they’re likely to gain trust. To appear more capable — and therefore more trustworthy — many people tend to boast (吹嘘), according to another longstanding theory that researchers call impression management. But a new paper suggests that the common method people use to gain trust could have the opposite effect.
“If you consider yourself a highly capable individual, have a good education, are successful in life, then don’t talk too proudly about it when presenting yourself to others or managing impressions about what you can do,” said Martin Reimann, the paper’s lead author. “It can backfire, and people might become distrusting.”
“Since impression management is so widespread, we wondered how it impacts the well-known effect of ability on trust,” Reimann said.
To answer the question, the researchers designed seven online experiments concerning participants’ trust. In one experiment, for example, participants shopped for a TV in an online marketplace, similar to Amazon, with third-party vendors (销售商). Customer reviews with star ratings told participants how capable or competent vendors were, and each vendor’s ad either did or did not include a boastful statement of self-promotion.
Designing seven studies, Reimann said, allowed the researchers to reach more people and explore a range of variables that might affect someone’s willingness to trust. There were more than 106,000 participants across all seven studies.
The experiments showed that participants were more likely, unsurprisingly, to trust people or companies that appeared more capable. But every study also showed that highly capable people or companies were viewed as less trustworthy if they also boastfully promoted themselves.
“We see trust as a central concept that holds together society,” Reimann added. “If we don’t trust each other, then a lot of processes could come to a standstill. It’s important to understand what it is in the first place that leads people to trust each other, and how we can encourage that at different levels of society. That’s what we want to further uncover.”
【小题1】According to the text, what do many people do by impression management?| A．Make themselves seem more important. | B．Remind others that boasting will lose trust. |
| C．Show what their impression of someone is. | D．Prove that they have become more capable. |
| A．A TV. | B．Participants. | C．Vendors. | D．Customer reviews. |
| A．The bad effects of boasting. | B．People’s views on boasting. |
| C．Promotion of trust among people. | D．Different levels of trust in society. |
| A．People need to be able to trust each other. | B．Boasting could make people trust you less. |
| C．People’s trust depends on how honest you are. | D．Being good at your job helps you to gain trust. |
