Trust Promotes Unethical Behavior: Excessive Trust, Opportunistic Exploitation, and Strategic Exploitation

Abstract

Trust is critical for our cooperation and effective working relationships, but trust also enables exploitation and unethical behavior. Prior trust research has disproportionately focused on the benefits of trust, even though some of the most egregious unethical behaviors occur because of misplaced trust. Targets of exploitation often overweight the wrong trust cues and are exploited by people who either opportunistically or strategically take advantage of trusting targets. We call for future work to explore the critical link between trust and unethical behavior.

Keywords: Trust, Ethics, Exploitation, Morality, Negotiations