Running head: TRUST IN AUTHORITY
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Trust in Authority
Aaron Pacholke
Loras College
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Abstract
Authority generally relies on trust to convince followers to cooperate in its actions and
decisions. Where trust fails, authority will use some amount of force to maintain its guidelines.
Trust can be measured with approval and willingness to cooperate with authority’s actions.
Examples of authority such as the police, employers, and tax officials demonstrate the interplay
between fairness, power, character traits, and charisma. Cooperation and approval can be
measured relating to authority’s actions. Controversial acts of authority can polarize people over
their trust in authority or push populations toward greater extremes of distrust. Studying trust in
authority can help prevent lack of approval and cooperation through fairness.
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Trust in Authority
Discussion
Outside of force, trust is the greatest thing that substantiates the power that authorities use
to regulate, police, and mandate the lives of others. Trusted authorities are followed willingly
while forceful authorities are followed by those who wish to avoid the consequences of not
following. Democratic states usually try to rule through trust wherever possible as misbalanced
force is thought to evaporate the trust in authority, which this paper will elaborate on. The
important questions are what constitutes unbalanced force and what are the repercussions of
forceful authority on the level of trust in that authority. I hypothesize that actions seen as overtly
forceful in response to protests will have the effect of reducing the trust imparted to that
authority by those not involved in the original protests or authority.
Bases of Trust
There are a few elements that need to be isolated and examined on authority before
addressing the nature of its actions in response to protests. The amount of trust bestowed on an
authority’s can be through the cooperation offered the authority and the reported approval of the
authority’s actions. A distinction should stand between the cooperation and approval of those
currently protesting the action of authority and those bystanders observing the protests and
authority’s responses. It should also be clarified that protest refers to any action or movement
intended to oppose or state objections of the authorities’ actions. This model of authority and
protests can include examples from parent/child to government/civilian.
Before considering the consequences of authority’s actions, the variables attributing to
the approval and cooperation entrusted to authority must be included. Researchers van Dijke, De
Cremer, and Mayer cooperated between Universities from the Netherlands to Michigan in
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identifying and testing the effects of power and fairness on the level of trust granted to
authorities. In surveying Dutch employees, they found that fairness affected the trust in
employers that had a high level of power more than those considered to have less power. (van
Dijke, De Cremer, and Mayer, 2010) Power can be translated as either the ability to force or the
authority’s own strength in character (charisma) in persuading cooperation. Those with a greater
amount of power over an individual will have a greater variation of trust impacting their
approval probably because of the scale to which that authority can influence the individuals’
lives. It is then the more powerful authorities are more suitable for study when considering the
effects of trust on approval.
The role of a police officer is an accepted position of power which daily has requires the
approval and cooperation of citizens. Australian researchers expanded the current research
associated with the public’s views of the police based on the procedural justice/fairness
displayed by the police while enforcing laws. Their concern was to research the effect of police
fairness on the views held by those handled by law enforcement rather than the wider population
which might not have interacted with police at any time. They found that those directly in
contact with police behavior, like the greater population not directly influenced that higher
perceived fairness from the police resulted in a greater opinion of police legitimacy, hence
greater approval and cooperation. (Elliott, Thomas, and Ogloff, 2011). While this study did find
that similar changes in views affected fairness, it did not sample observers that did not interact
with police or compare the change in views from fair treatment between those handled by police
and observers. One possible research idea for study between groups affected and not affected by
police actions might reveal a differing level of power attributed to police. The differing trust
might impact the amount of variance in trust like that found in the employer/employee study.
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(van Dijke, De Cremer, and Mayer, 2010) The differing amounts of exposure to authority could
attribute to perceived power and thus affect approval, trust, and cooperation.
Cooperation
Any authority ultimately asks or demands cooperation from its followers in completing
tasks or following the group’s rules. It was earlier purposed that trust in authority could partially
be measured through the level of cooperation authority experienced. (De Cremer and Tyler,
2007) Researchers from Tilburg and New York Universities surveyed the effects that trust and
procedural fairness have on the level of cooperation received by authorities. An interesting
variable they included was the presence of the participant’s voice in the authority’s decisionmaking which actually had a greater effect on cooperation than trust alone. (De Cremer and
Tyler, 2007) When participants feel that they contributed to the final decision, they are more
likely to cooperate with that decision than just trusting an arbitrary authorities’ decision.
This relationship between a participant’s voice in a decision is reinforced in a small study
by researchers Van Prooijen, Van Den Bos, and Wilke. The reasoning built upon by said
researchers proposed that the more authority listened to participants, the more participants would
feel that the outcome would meet their approval from the sense of feedback and respect afforded
to participants. (Van Prooijen, Van Den Bos, and Wilke, 2007). Neither previous studies on
cooperation examined the approval of authorities actions based on the possible similarity
between authorities’ actions and the participant’s own idea of an action. Participant’s proposed
actions to a situation could be an interfering variable in studying approval in authorities’ actions
unless controlled for with adequately vague questions on the actual actions of authority or else
studied independently.
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Traits Affecting Trust
Two factors should be covered about the view on authority, the authorities’ charisma and
the viewpoint’s association within authority. (Fox, Payne, Priest, and Philliber, 1977) Four
researchers in 1977 investigated the relationship between approval in an authorities’ actions
based on the placement those individuals had within the authority structure within four classes;
high command, lower command, worker, and obey class. Their results showed a difference
between the approval and cooperation between the highest command and the lowest obey class.
The difference in approval was not statistically significant though the obey class was
significantly more likely to cooperate with authority than the command class. (Fox, 1977) This
clarifies two points; approval and class do not necessarily impact cooperation. In relating this
information with previous ideas on authority, it could be that those with lower authority have a
more acute response to the power held by those with more authority in negotiating cooperation.
A serious implication of this is that those with greater authority are less likely to respect the
authority of others such as lawmakers disregarding the laws regulating them. This will be
important to remember as we look closer at the tendency to disregard or protest authority.
Charisma is a being used as a catch all term for those personality traits attributed to
authority which may have some impact on the approval and cooperation with authority. Since
these traits, being largly subjective, are mostly attributed to the authority by an observer or
participant, there is little real world control over these traits by the authority. De Cremer and den
Ouden examined passion as an element of charisma in affecting the perception of procedural
fairness. They hypothesized that authorities displaying more passion would impart the
impression of being fairer in their dealings. They found that passion had a positive effect on
perceived fairness but could also display negative emotions like anger that diminished the
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positive impact. (De Cremer and den Ouden, 2009) Compared with authority factors like
procedural fairness, trust, association, and power, charismatic factors like passion are more
subjective and unaccountable within research.
Ruling out factors in Cooperation
After considering some of the factors involved in trusting and cooperating with authority,
it is time to address the real bones of the issue. Why do individuals protest and reject authority?
The answer is partly the interplay between trust and the authorities’ power. (van Dijke, De
Cremer, and Mayer, 2010) Cooperation is influenced by the exposure to authority individuals
have. (Elliott, Thomas, and Ogloff, 2011) The participant’s voice or sense of influencing an
authorities’ decision improves the trust in the outcome. (Van Prooijen, Van Den Bos, and Wilke,
2007) Now these studies have shown some of the mechanisms affecting why people approve and
cooperate with authority but not necessarily behind rejecting or protesting authority.
Few studies actually go out to find information on the nature of disobedience though a
few famous ones like the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments have shown the shocking
impact of authority. Following in such infamous footsteps, a lesser known study conducted by
Bocchiaro and Zimbardo have participants give increasingly damaging verbal assaults to an actor
for failures to learn. Deliberately recording and cataloging outward signs of stress, they found
that nine participants who did not stop the verbal assault until the end experienced equivalent
stress as the twenty one who stopped at the eleventh question. (Bocchiaro, and Zimbardo, 2010)
As the participants displayed equivalent amounts of stress at the same time during the
experiment after they split off, it seems like stress has little to do with whether someone follows
an authority figure. This counters the common thought that people defy authority because it
causes them greater stress than those who would continue to follow even unpleasant orders.
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Individual personality traits cannot be ignored when considering responses to authority as
there is a scale of behaviors in responding to authority from criminal acts, lawful protests, verbal
objections, silent disagreement, and even cooperation. Murphy’s article published in the Springer
Science+Business Media Journal addresses personality traits between those that respond
differently to authority, a quality called affect intensity. Murphy used two surveys comprising
hundreds of Australian tax offenders in measuring their emotional responses to their brush with
the Australian tax authorities and their later cooperation with tax laws. The researcher did
reconfirm that perceived procedural fairness lessened negative emotions such as anger and
frustration which were among those used to measure affect intensity. Fairness was more effective
in reducing anger in low affect intensive individuals than with higher intensity against authority.
According to the self reported survey, the lower affect intensity individual was barely past
statistical significance was more likely to cooperate with authority when treated fairly. (Murphy,
2009) While targeting the response to authority, this survey measured through self reporting on
an act of authority that is very not controversial to the majority of the population. Further study
should use examples of authority’s actions which are more polarizing to help define the
distinctions in response from approval to complete resistance. Of particular importance will be
reviewing whether fairness still has the effect of increasing cooperation during controversial
actions of authority.
Controversy
Controversial actions of authority are most evident during times of protest when
authority’s actions are already being questioned. Moments in history such as during the 1968
democratic convention, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, and modern controversies
surrounding government responses to the Occupy Wall Street movement call for the need to
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examine the effect of heavy handed policing in encouraging approval, cooperation and trust. Past
protests were controversial in their day and current protests have provided controversial
examples of authority to use as well. Supposed police overreaction in the raids on Zuccotti Park,
ignoring federal judges protecting protestors’ rights, incarcerating members of the press and city
council, enforcing inflated bail on LA protestor’s misdemeanors, excessive use of stun grenades
on crowds at Oakland, and multiple account of pepper spraying non violent individuals comprise
a bulk of possible examples for an authority reaction survey geared to measure the approval of
such actions.
Conclusions
The study of responses to authority is a critical field considering the implications of
obedience and protests. Actions of authorities have shown to effect approval and possible future
cooperation through the fairness and the views of their actions. Authorities’ passion and
individual’s affect intensity have shown to have only a small impact on trust while authorities’
power and fairness have greater impact. Of particular interest is the controversial level of
response when authority figures began to lose approval and cooperation for their action in
responding to current displays of disapproval and noncooperation. Applicable conclusions could
be drawn to include authority relationships of parents, employers, police, and even nation
leaders. Mapping the characteristics of trustworthy responses could improve authorities’
retention of approval and cooperation while still responding to the presence of discontent.
Understanding more of how individuals and collective groups respond to acts of authority will
further the justification and survival of authority. Acts seen as overly aggressive towards
protestors will only hinder the approval, cooperation and trust bestowed on authority.
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Method
Participants
Twenty or more participants will fill eight groups to test the three, two dimensional,
variables of feedback, power, and the fairness of the authority. At minimum, the study will
include one hundred and sixty adult participants who respond to the ad for paid participation in a
product research group. Respondents will be divided into groups randomly except for even
distributions of gender and age.
Materials
This study will require tricking participants into playing a simple real time strategy
simulation by speaking into a microphone. The fake strategy game needs only simple graphics
since participants will be told that the research is centered on voice recognition and commands,
not the participants’ actions. After the fake game, participants will take a survey on their
experience seeded with questions on their trust of their “commander”. During testing,
participants will be located in a plain room with only the computer monitor and headset equipped
with a microphone. The ‘game’ will actually be controlled from a computer in another room by a
researcher. A waiting area is needed to greet participants and to act out deciding a commander.
One resurcher will also need a pair of weighted dice that land on either red or blue and a false
button connected to the microphone headset.
Procedure
Applicants will enter the experiment one at a time but will encounter another person in
the waiting area which they will be lead to believe is another participant, but who is actually a
researcher. The two of them will be told the purpose of the experiment is to test out new voice
command software on a basic test game platform by an authoritative researcher in a lab coat. Up
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to this point, all participants will be given the same cover story and introduced to the same
researcher pretending to be a fellow participant.
The first difference between groups begins on how the hidden researcher becomes the
‘commander’. To control the fairness of the commander’s authority, the commander will be
chosen arbitrarily over half the participants and seemingly randomly in the other half. In reality,
the question of commander is never in doubt as the participants will always be turned down. At
this point, the participant is separated from the commander as they are lead to separate rooms
depositing the participant in the game monitor room with the microphone headset.
Half of the commanders will seemingly be selected at random by having both
commander and participant select either red or blue and then having a the researcher pull out a
single set of dice with three sides red and three sides blue. The researcher will actually have a
pair of dice pocketed and pull out the one weighted for the color the commander chose. The
other half of participants will see the researcher greet the commander with some level of
familiarity from some unrelated acquaintance and later selected them with bias for the role of
greater responsibility over the participant.
When alone with the researcher in the game room, all participants will be told that they
are to command their forces in the game by speaking normally into the headset’s microphone
and that the commander will give orders through the headset. Everyone will be told that they are
free to play however they want by following or ignoring any of the commander’s orders. While
in reality, participants will get paid the same amount for their participation no matter what, half
of the participants will be told that the commander will be able to deduct some of the
participant’s pay for any reason, increasing the perceived power of the commander’s authority.
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The other half will be reminded that they will be paid the same no matter how they play,
decreasing the perception of the commander’s authority.
The final variable between groups is the availability of participants to talk back to the
commander. Half of the groups will have a button which they will press to speak to the
commander during the game. Despite the ability to speak with the commander, they will not
change the commander’s orders. The other half will not be able to speak back to the commander.
The researcher will leave the room while the fake game plays out as the participant decides how
much or little they cooperate with the commander’s instructions. The commander will make the
same orders in all groups while the participant instructs the game through the microphone. The
participant’s cooperation will be measured from how often and well the commander’s orders are
followed.
To recap on variables, there are three conditions which are different between the eight
groups. Fairness of the authorities’ position will be modified by having participants perceive
either a random or biased selection of the role of commander. The power of the authority is
changed from the control the commander is said to have over the participant’s reward for
participating in the study. The perceived amount of feedback will be from the ability to talk to
the authority even though it will not change the demands authority places on the participant.
Cooperation will be measured as how often participants follow the authority’s orders.
Participants’ trust in the authority will be measured from survey questions hidden in a
performance questionnaire on their experience with the voice commands.
Results
A strong positive correlation was found between the measures used to determine trust in
the commander and the participant’s performance in cooperating with the authority’s commands,
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p~.8, s=.001. Among the eight groups, the one that had the authority chosen with bias, had power
over the participant and deaf to the participant’s feedback produced the least cooperation and
trust with an estimated range of 10-20%. The group that perceived the authority having been
chosen fairly, was open to feedback, and had less power over participant received the most
cooperation and reported trustworthiness at an estimated range of 80-90%. There were
significant correlations from all variables affecting power, fairness, and feedback with the
measures of trust and cooperation ranging from .23 to .85.
When the data is put through a scatterplot, the points resemble four groups set on a rising
slope with the highest ranked group on trust and cooperation being the one with feedback,
fairness, and less power. The two larger groups are in line with the extreme low end of the
spectrum and describe the three groups that had two of the qualities of the most trustworthy
group and three of the groups that only shared one quality with the most trustworthy group. The
scatterplot backs up the strong correlations seen between variables and measures.
Discussion
Authorities that are arbitrary, deaf to feedback, and powerful are more likely to be viewed
as less trustworthy and inspire less cooperation than those which seem fairer, listen to feedback,
and are less powerful. The data supported this hypothesis through a strong correlation between
trust, cooperation, and the factors of power, feedback, and fairness. Participants were most
trusting and cooperative when authority was responsive to feedback, chosen fairly, and had less
direct power over the participant. This means that authority is least trusted and followed when it
becomes too unfair, deaf to protests, and powerful.
An important thing to note is that the three factors were more influential together than
they were separately; meaning that a trustworthy authority is more likely to have two or more
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positive qualities than just one or none. It is also possible that extreme cases of one factor, such
as power, may be enough to overcome the effects of the other two qualities. For example,
protestors may feel so threatened by the active power of riot police that they forget that they have
been treated fairly and listened to beforehand. Having identified these qualities of authority, it
will be important to map them more closely in further research.
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