The Effects of Being Trusted on Individual Performance: The Mediating Role of Compassionate Helping

Under current team-oriented work environments, receiving coworkers’ trust is essential for accomplishing positive work outcomes. In this study, we focus on the employee’s position in trust networks among coworkers. In particular, we explore the effects of individuals’ centrality in two dimensions of trust networks (i.e., cognition-based and affect-based trust) on the employee performance. We also investigate the mediating role of compassionate helping in the relationship between affect-based trust and individual outcomes. We test our hypotheses using data from 204 employees in 10 organizations. As predicted, individual centrality in cognitive trust network is positively associated with employee performance. However, centrality in affective trust network is not significantly associated with individual outcomes. We also found that affect-based trust indirectly increased employee performance via companionate helping from coworkers. The results suggest that caregivers also need to receive compassionate helping from others to improve their performances. From a social network perspective, this study reveals the differential effects of two type of trust and sheds new light on the trustee’s position among coworkers in the workplace. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.