Trust me! Examining how group membership and self-disclosure affects trust perceptions between strangers

Abstract

In this study, group membership and self-disclosure intimacy were manipulated to examine if they impacted participants’ perceptions of trust in a stranger. It was hypothesized that ingroup strangers and intimate self-disclosers would garner more trust and be more likely to receive a reciprocal self-disclosure than outgroup strangers and those who did not self-disclose intimately. In an experiment, participants (n = 184) were asked to report their perceptions of a stranger they read about in two contexts where group membership was determined by either geographic origin or age. Findings showed that ingroup intimate self-disclosers elicited significantly more trust when compared to ingroup non-intimate self-disclosers. When geographic origin was the criterion for group membership, ingroup intimate self-disclosers were more likely than non-intimate self-disclosers to receive a reciprocal self-disclosure. Also, when age was the criterion for group membership, ingroup intimate self-disclosers received significantly more intimate reciprocal self-disclosures than outgroup members or non-intimate self-disclosers. These findings support the idea that group membership and self-disclosure intimacy can impact perceptions of trust in and communicative behaviors towards others.