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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1440768
This article is part of the Research Topic The Social Brain: New Insights from Social, Clinical, and Biological Psychology View all 11 articles

The impact of moral judgement on bystanders' interpersonal trust: The mediating role of trustworthiness

Provisionally accepted
Zhen Zhang Zhen Zhang 1Xia Cai Xia Cai 1Weiwei Gao Weiwei Gao 2Zengtong Zhang Zengtong Zhang 1Chunhui Qi Chunhui Qi 1*
  • 1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
  • 2 Hongqi District second experimental primary school, Xinxiang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Interpersonal trust is the premise and foundation of encouraging cooperation in this age of rapid progress. The purpose of this study was to investigate how moral judgement affects bystanders' interpersonal trust and its internal mechanisms when there are ethical transgressions. The moral judgement of the evaluators was divided into three categories-opposition, neutrality and approvalon the basis of the moral transgressions of the offenders. Three moral judgement circumstances were randomly assigned to 143 primary school pupils, and the assessors scored the children via trustworthiness and trust scales. According to the findings, interpersonal trust is significantly predicted by moral judgement. Compared with neutral judgement, opposing moral violations significantly improves bystanders' interpersonal trust in the evaluator, whereas approving moral violations does not significantly predict interpersonal trust. Trustworthiness plays a mediating role in the influence of moral judgement on interpersonal trust. Compared with neutral judgement, trustworthiness mediates the influence of opposed judgement on interpersonal trust rather than the influence of approved judgement on interpersonal trust. The findings demonstrate that moral opposition to transgressions influences interpersonal trust either directly or indirectly through trustworthiness.

    Keywords: interpersonal trust, moral judgement, trustworthiness, mediation effect, Adolescent

    Received: 30 May 2024; Accepted: 13 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhang, Cai, Gao, Zhang and Qi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Chunhui Qi, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China

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