Organizational work is characterized by positive as well as often negative work behaviors from employees. The same may be said of work done in virtual teams, where computer-mediated communication among team members can be particularly uncivil and inflammatory (Wilson, Straus, & McEvily, 2006). Accordingly, trust has been theorized as more difficult to develop in these types of teams compared to traditional face to face teams. Using a computer simulation of a collaborative team task, this study examined how individuals in virtual teams integrate conflicting pieces of positive and negative information about a teammate into one overall rating of trust. Data were analyzed from 240 individuals to examine the influence of these behaviors on levels of trust toward a target teammate. Evidence of trust quickly developing and declining, i.e., the dynamic nature of trust, in a virtual team was observed. Secondly, the negativity effect was found, where a negative behavior was given more weight in ratings of trust than a positive behavior. Next, the hierarchically restrictive schema was offered as a plausible explanation for the negativity effect due to creating asymmetrical expectations of subsequent behavior based on an initially observed behavior. Lastly, a significant negativity effect was not found when the two behaviors were performed, one each, by a pair of unrelated persons or by a pair of related persons with entitativity.

Les informations négatives sur les produits et les entreprises auxquelles les consommateurs ont accès ne sont pas toujours fiables et claires. Cette thèse étudie comment l'orientation régulatrice des consommateurs influe sur leur réaction par rapport aux informations négatives comme une fonction de l'ambiguïté des informations. Nous suggérons que lorsque les informations négatives sont ambigües, les consommateurs avec une orientation prévention, par rapport à ceux avec une orientation promotion, seront beaucoup plus influencés par les informations et susceptibles de changer en conséquence vers le bas leur attitude envers la marque. En revanche, lorsque les informations négatives sont claires, à la fois les consommateurs orientés promotion et ceux orientés prévention seront très influencés et susceptibles de revoir leur attitude à la baisse par rapport à la marque en question. De plus, nous alléguons que la diagnosticité perçue des informations exerce un rôle médiateur sur les effets proposés. Plus particulièrement, en présence des informations négatives ambiguës, l'orientation prévention (par rapport à l'orientation promotion) a tendance à amplifier la diagnosticité perçue des informations qui, en retour, accentue les effets que les informations négatives auront sur la révision de l'attitude. Quatre études expérimentales ont testé et confirmé ces hypothèses à travers trois scénarios ambigus différents : (1) quand les informations négatives proviennent d'une source dont la crédibilité est incertaine (étude 1), (2) quand la raison pour laquelle un produit défectueux est ambiguë (étude 2) et (3) quand les évaluations de produit sont très contradictoires (études 3a et 3b). / Negative information about products or companies that consumers encounter in the marketplace is not always certain and clear-cut. This dissertation explores how consumers' regulatory focus orientation affects their response to negative information as a function of information ambiguity. We propose that under the situations where ambiguity is present in the negative information, prevention-focused compared to promotion-focused consumers will be more strongly persuaded and exhibit a large downward revision of their attitude toward the brand. In contrast, under the situations where the negative information is unambiguous, both promotion and prevention-focused consumers will be strongly persuaded and revise accordingly their attitude toward the brand. Moreover, we argue that perceived diagnosticity of the information mediates the proposed effect. Specifically, in the presence of ambiguity in negative information, a prevention focus (vs. a promotion focus) leads to an inflated perceived information diagnosticity, which, in turn, accentuates the impact of negative information on judgment revision. Four experimental studies tested and confirmed these propositions in three different ambiguous scenarios: (1) when negative product information comes from a source with uncertain credibility(Study 1); (2) when the cause of a reported product failure is ambiguous(Study2), and (3) when product reviews are highly conflicting (Study 3a and Study 3b).

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This research project proposes to try to isolate and measure the influence of “regime fatigue” on gubernatorial elections and senatorial elections in the United States where there is no incumbent running. The research begins with a review of the negativity effect and its potential influence on schema-based impression forming by voters. Applicable literature on the topics of social clustering and homophily is then highlighted as it provides the vehicle through which the negativity effect disseminates across collections of socially-clustered individuals and ultimately contributes to changing tides of public opinion despite the fact that the political party identification can remain relatively fixed in the aggregate.