Traditionality and trustworthiness in Turkey: A vignette experiment in the context of employee selection

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2578880_(Table of contents)

This thesis examined a trustee’s (a job applicant’s) competence and individualizing versus binding (or traditionality) morality on the trustor’s assessment of trustee trustworthiness, trustor’s selection intention, and Behavioral Trust Intentions towards the trustee in the employee selection process. The first hypothesis expected a positive association between trustee’s competence and trustor’s reliance intentions toward the trustee. The second set of hypotheses were built upon social identity theory and predicted a moderation effect of trustor’s individualizing/binding moralities on the relationship between trustee’s individualizing/binding morality and trustor’s trustworthiness assessment, selection intention, and behavioral trust intentions. Experimental vignette methodology was used to test the hypotheses. Respondents responded to an online survey consisting of a selection scenario providing a fictive job candidate and his CV and reference call notes to manipulate the trustee’s competence, morality, and warmth information. A pilot study with the data from 166 respondents provided support for the competence, morality, and warmth manipulations. The main study was conducted with the data from 164 respondents. ANOVA results did not support the first hypothesis. For the second set of hypotheses, twelve hierarchical regression analyses were conducted. Although the Delta R-squared was not significant when the interaction terms were entered, the results showed that the moderation effect of traditionality, which captured binding morality was statistically significant for dependent variables. Also, moderating effect of individualizing morality was statistically significant for trustworthiness perception and selection intention. However, overall, the second set of hypotheses was not supported either as the effects were not significant for the proposed candidate profiles. The results are discussed in terms of methodological limitations as well as future directions.