Trust Repair

Trust is critical for building and maintaining relationships and for effectively working together. When trust is broken, it has serious consequences for both individuals and organizations. In this review we examine the research on how to repair broken trust. We begin by defining trust, how it is broken, how the actor's violation is attributed, and what it means to repair it. We then discuss two dominant trust repair strategies: short-term and long-term. Short-term strategies include verbal statements such as excuses, apologies, and denials, and compensatory arrangements such as repayment for a loss. Longer-term strategies include structural rearrangements of the relationship (e.g., contracts, monitoring), reframing the violation (e.g., attempts to shift blame, mitigate perceptions of harm), granting forgiveness, and remaining silent. Lastly, we discuss concerns for the future of trust research such as construct clarity, measurement, and contextual considerations.