Emotion and Trust 1 Running head: EMOTION AND TRUST Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust

We report results from five experiments that describe the influence of emotional states on trust. We find that incidental emotions significantly influence trust in unrelated settings. Happiness and gratitude, emotions with positive valence, increase trust, and anger, an emotion with negative valence, decreases trust. Specifically, we find that emotions characterized by other-person control (anger and gratitude) and weak control appraisals (happiness) influence trust significantly more than emotions characterized by personal control (pride and guilt) or situational control (sadness). These findings suggest that emotions may be more likely to be misattributed when the appraisals of the emotion are consistent with the judgment task than when the appraisals of the emotion are inconsistent with the judgment task. Salience of the emotion’s cause and target familiarity moderate the relationship between incidental emotions and trust. Emotions do not influence trust when individuals are aware of the source of their emotions or when individuals are very familiar with the trustee.