Felt Trust: Added Baggage or Added Value? A Critical Review, Constructive Redirection, and Exploratory Meta-Analysis

Abstract

After decades of scholarly focus on studying trust from the trustor's perspective, there has been a rapidly growing interest in understanding trust from the trustee's perspective, with a particular focus on felt trust (i.e., a trustee's perception of being trusted by a trustor). The fundamental assumption underlying this trustee-centric perspective is that it complements the dominant trustor-centric perspective and enables a more comprehensive understanding of how trust manifests and operates in the workplace. Unfortunately, our critical review of 121 felt trust studies reported in 87 manuscripts reveals major problems in multiple areas (conceptualization, measurement, theorizing, and research methods) that limit this field’s ability to achieve this potential. To remedy this, we build on existing frameworks, best practices, and exemplars from the (felt) trust and meta-perceptions literature to outline a constructive redirection of the field. We subsequently empirically test the field’s fundamental assumption by meta-analytically exploring the distinctiveness and incremental validity of felt trust beyond other trust concepts. Taken together, our envisioned redirection and meta-analytic findings enable the field of felt trust to live up to its promise and enrich our understanding of organizational trust.