The Cost of Repaying Trust: Examining Psychological Detachment as a Mediator in the Relationship Between Feeling Trusted and Work–Family Conflict

Introduction

Trust, an important component of interpersonal relationships within the workplace,^1–3 is an important topic of management research. Early research in this area mainly focused on employees’ trust in supervisors, reporting that employees with higher levels of trust tend to have greater job satisfaction and organizational commitment.⁴ However, scholars have begun to realize that studying only employees’ trust in supervisors does not reveal the whole picture of trust in the supervisor–subordinate relationship, because employees can in turn feel trusted by supervisors.^5–7 Hence, the extent to which a subordinate or employee feels trusted by a supervisor, ie, perceives the supervisor as willing to be vulnerable to the employee’s actions, has attracted increasing research attention in recent years.⁸ Research has found that feeling trusted may benefit employees by enhancing their job engagement,⁹ task performance, and organizational citizenship behavior.¹⁰

However, just like two sides of a same coin, feeling trusted is not always beneficial; recent studies have drawn attention to its dark side and found that it can also be costly.⁸ While this research has offered valuable insights into the negative aspects of feeling trusted in the workplace, it has been limited to the work environment, paying little attention to the important link between feeling trusted and the non-work domain. This lack of understanding is problematic because research has found that employees who feel trusted are likely to have a heavier workload.⁸ Employees who expend significant amounts of energy at work find themselves with less energy when they return home, and may thus lead to work–family conflict (a form of interrole conflict in which role pressures from the work and family domains are incompatible in some respects).^10–13 Without exploring the effect of feeling trusted on work–family conflict will fail to fully reveal the dark side of feeling trusted. In addition, research has shown that work–family conflict can impede employees’ performance in both work and non-work domains.¹⁴ Investigating the antecedents of work–family conflict is vital to avoid the emergence and development of such conflict in practice.¹⁵ Thus, for both theoretical and practical reasons, we believe that it is imperative to explore the effect of feeling trusted on work–family conflict and the potential mechanism underlying this relationship.

In exploring this issue, our research contributes to the literature in several ways. First, we add to the literature on feeling trusted by extending discussion of negative outcomes from the workplace to the family. Second, we provide a theoretical framework for explaining how and why work–family conflict is affected by feeling trusted. We draw on social exchange theory to develop a mediation pathway that links feeling trusted with work–family conflict via psychological detachment. Specifically, we suggest that employees who feel trusted are less likely to achieve psychological detachment from work, which in turn increases their work–family conflict. Finally, we examine how personal characteristics, particularly positive reciprocity beliefs, can systematically influence the effect of feeling trusted on psychological detachment and the mediating effect of psychological detachment. By doing so, we reveal when and how feeling trusted can affect work–family conflict through psychological detachment.

Theoretical Framework

Social exchange theory provides a useful lens for understanding how feeling trusted may generate work–family conflict. This theory suggests that the relationships between individuals represent a type of exchange.¹⁶ People follow the principle of reciprocity in the exchange process; that is, when they are given resources by others, they feel morally obliged to return those benefits in some way.¹⁷ Such exchange may be material (eg, wages) or social (eg, trust, support, and advice). A great deal of organizational behavior research has shown that social exchange theory is applicable in the workplace.^18–20 For example, research has found that in high-quality leader–member exchange relationships, supervisors tend to allocate more resources and support to their subordinates. Subsequently, the subordinates feel an obligation to reciprocate, thereby improving their work performance and organizational commitment.²¹

Hypotheses Development

The Mediating Role of Psychological Detachment

Based on social exchange theory, we expect psychological detachment may mediate the relationship between feeling trusted and work–family conflict. Psychological detachment implies that employees not only change location when they leave the workplace but also take a break from thinking about work.²²

In the workplace, supervisors often determine the benefits that employees receive in terms of salary, promotion, and other opportunities.^23,24 As a result, employees may seek to maintain strong social exchange relationships with their supervisors to secure these benefits.⁹ When employees are aware of their supervisors’ trust in them, based on their perceived obligation to repay this trust, they are more willing to meet their supervisors’ expectations and put extra effort into accomplishing assigned tasks.²⁵ In such cases, employees may bring their work home and continue to engage in work-related tasks during non-working hours. Even if employees do not carry out work-related tasks at home, they may be thinking about the day’s work or the next day’s work, making it difficult for them to achieve complete psychological detachment from work.²² We therefore hypothesized:

Hypothesis 1. Feeling trusted is negatively related to psychological detachment.

Moreover, when employees have a lower level of psychological detachment, the boundary between work and non-work becomes blurred. Consequently, any negative affect and stress felt by employees at work are more likely to spill over to the family domain, affecting family life and generating work–family conflict.²⁶ In addition, if employees cannot achieve psychological detachment during non-working hours, they may be less involved in family life, making it difficult for them to assume their family role and fulfill their role obligations, also resulting in work–family conflict. Therefore, a low level of psychological detachment is expected to increase work–family conflict. We thus proposed:

Hypothesis 2. Psychological detachment is negatively related to work–family conflict.

Integrating Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2, we further propose:

Hypothesis 3. Feeling trusted has a positive indirect effect on work–family conflict via psychological detachment.

The Moderating Role of Positive Reciprocity Beliefs

In addition, interaction does not always take place in a quid pro quo fashion;²⁷ that is, one’s efforts are not always rewarded by others. Therefore, we further inferred that there may exist a moderating variable that determines the strength of the effect of feeling trusted on psychological detachment. We focused on positive reciprocity beliefs (an individual difference variable) as a possible moderator, which reflect the degree to which individuals endorse reciprocity in exchange relationships.^27,28

Individuals with strong positive reciprocity beliefs try to maintain long-term high-quality relationships with exchange partners through reciprocity.^28,29 Failing to reciprocate leads to feelings of indebtedness.³⁰ In contrast, individuals with a low level of positive reciprocity beliefs may feel little obligation to reciprocate behavior, regardless of what they receive from their exchange partners.²⁷ These arguments suggest that when feeling trusted by supervisors, employees who hold stronger positive reciprocity beliefs are more likely to feel obligated and put extra effort into repaying their supervisors’ trust,^16,31 which weakens their psychological detachment from work. In contrast, employees who do not hold strong positive reciprocity beliefs feel little obligation to repay supervisors’ trust, and so are less likely to put excess effort into their work in non-work time, leading to greater psychological detachment. Hence, we hypothesized:

Hypothesis 4. The negative effect of feeling trusted on psychological detachment is moderated by positive reciprocity beliefs, such that the relationship is stronger when positive reciprocity beliefs is high (vs low).

The basic tenet of social exchange theory is that in a binary relationship, if something is given, there is a silent promise that something of equivalent value will be returned.^16,17 Employees who feel trusted believe that their supervisors have positive expectations of them, which boosts their pride and represents a psychological resource gain.⁸ Influenced by the norm of reciprocity, employees feel obliged to repay the trust of supervisors and thus may devote themselves to working overtime, leading to low psychological detachment and further triggering work–family conflict. In addition, the above process depends on the level of employees’ positive reciprocity beliefs. When the level of positive reciprocity beliefs is high, employees who feel trusted have a stronger motivation to repay their supervisors, thereby triggering lower psychological detachment and work–family conflict. We created our theoretical model (see Figure 1) by developing a moderated mediation hypothesis integrating all of the important variables:

Hypothesis 5. The positive indirect effect of feeling trusted on work–family conflict via psychological detachment is moderated by positive reciprocity beliefs, such that the positive indirect effect is stronger when the level of positive reciprocity beliefs is high (vs low).

Figure 1 Theoretical model.

Method

Participants and Procedure

A snowball sampling method was used to recruit participants. Specifically, we contacted several alumni who were full-time employees from different companies in China through alumni networks and asked them to invite their coworkers to participate in our study. Overall, we invited 500 employees from different companies to participate in our research. Two phases of data collection were carried out. Each participant who completed both phases of the survey received ¥10 as a gift. To guarantee confidentiality, we identified each participant by a code and used the resulting codes to match the two phases of data.

Each of the two stages was separated by 2 weeks. In the initial phase (Time 1), we distributed 500 questionnaires to the participants, asking them to provide data on their demographic characteristics (eg, age, gender, tenure in their organization), the extent to which they felt trusted by their supervisors, and their positive reciprocity beliefs. A total of 458 participants returned valid questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 91.60%. In the second phase (Time 2), these 458 participants were sent additional questionnaires and asked to rate their psychological detachment and work–family conflict. A total of 375 participants returned the second questionnaires, giving a response rate of 81.88%. Therefore, our final sample comprised 375 participants with matched data from both phases. We attempted to determine whether there were any significant differences between the participants who completed both the Time 1 and the Time 2 questionnaires and those who did not. A t-test revealed that the difference between the two groups of participants had a non-significant influence on feeling trusted (t (456) = −1.55, p =0.12) and positive reciprocity beliefs (t (456) = −1.49, p = 0.14).

Of the 375 employees in the final sample, 60.3% were female and the average age was 33.13 years (SD = 6.77) and 56.5% employees have one or more children. They had worked for their current organizations for an average of 5.48 years (SD = 4.58).

Measures

Two researchers who were proficient in both Chinese and English translated the questionnaires into Chinese using the translation–back-translation procedure.³² Specifically, the original questionnaires were first translated by the first author into Chinese versions, which were then back-translated into English by a bilingual linguist. Subsequently, we compared the back-translated versions with the original ones to ensure their consistency.

Feeling Trusted (T1)

Feeling trusted was assessed using a four-item scale proposed by Lau et al.³³ An example item is “Empowering me with great decision-making power.” The items were measured on a scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.80.

Positive Reciprocity Beliefs (T1)

We employed a nine-item scale developed by Perugini, Gallucci, Presaghi and Ercolani (2003) to assess the participants’ positive reciprocity beliefs.³⁴ A sample item is “I am ready to undergo personal costs to help somebody who helped me before.” The items were measured on a scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.90.

Psychological Detachment (T2)

The participants were asked to complete a four-item scale developed by Sonnentag and Fritz (2007) to assess their psychological detachment from work.³⁵ A sample item is “During time after work, I distance myself from my work.” The items were measured on a scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.85.

Work–Family Conflict (T2)

We used a five-item scale developed by Netemeyer, Boles and McMurrian (1996) to measure work–family conflict.³⁶ A sample item is “The demands of my work interfere with my home and family life.” The items were measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.92.

Control Variables

For consistency with previous research on work–family conflict,^13,37 we controlled for the respondents’ age, gender, tenure (in years) at the organization, and whether they had children to reduce the possibility of spurious results. We controlled for age because it generally relates to career–life stage, which we hypothesized may play a role in the extent of work–family conflict experienced.³⁸ Likewise, we controlled for gender because males and females may experience different levels of work–family conflict.³⁹ We controlled for differences in tenure because research has suggested that employees may take time to adapt to a new workplace.⁴⁰ We also controlled for whether the participants had children, because stress associated with parenting may limit people’s capacity to fulfill their family roles.⁴¹

Analytic Strategy

Path analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses using Mplus 8.1.⁴² To reduce the risk of multicollinearity, the predictors (ie, feeling trusted and positive reciprocity beliefs) were mean-centered.⁴³ We also used bootstrapping to estimate the confidence intervals (CIs) of the indirect effects and to assess the differences between the indirect effects at different levels of the moderating variable.⁴²

Results

Preliminary Analyses

Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, correlations, and reliability scores of the variables used in our research. Feeling trusted was negatively correlated with psychological detachment (r = −0.19, p < 0.001) and psychological detachment was negatively correlated with work–family conflict (r = −0.19, p < 0.001). These correlation results provided preliminary support for our hypotheses.

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics

Before testing the hypotheses, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to assess the discriminant validity of the key variables. As shown in Table 2, the hypothesized four-factor model fitted the data better than any of the other models (χ²(203) = 552.56, RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, SRMR = 0.06), indicating that the four variables were distinct from each other and represented four different constructs.

Table 2 Confirmatory Factor Analysis Results

Hypothesis Tests

Table 3 presents the results of the path analysis. The results showed that feeling trusted had a significant negative effect on psychological detachment (b = −0.17, p = 0.003), Moreover, psychological detachment was negatively correlated with work–family conflict (b = −0.26, p = 0.005). Therefore, Hypothesis 1 and 2 were supported.

Table 3 Path Analysis Results

To further test the indirect effect of psychological detachment, we conducted bootstrapping (with 20,000 bootstrap samples) to estimate the CIs of the indirect effect. The estimated size of the indirect effect was 0.04, and the 95% bias corrected CI was [0.01, 0.10]. Therefore, Hypothesis 3 was supported.

In Hypothesis 4, we posited that positive reciprocity beliefs moderate the relationship between feeling trusted and psychological detachment, such that the effect of feeling trusted on psychological detachment is stronger when positive reciprocity beliefs are high rather than low. As shown in Table 3, we found that the interaction between feeling trusted and positive reciprocity beliefs was significantly and negatively correlated with psychological detachment (b = −0.13, p = 0.026). Figure 2 shows a graphical illustration of the moderating effect of positive reciprocity beliefs on the relationship between feeling trusted and psychological detachment. A simple slope analysis revealed that the negative effect of feeling trusted on psychological detachment was significant when the level of positive reciprocity beliefs was high (simple slope = −0.30, p = 0.000), but when the level of positive reciprocity beliefs was low, the analysis revealed a non-significant effect of feeling trusted on psychological detachment (simple slope = −0.03, p = 0.782). Hence, Hypothesis 4 was supported.

Figure 2 The interactive effect of feeling trusted and positive reciprocity beliefs on psychological detachment.

Finally, to test the integrated model, we used bootstrapping to estimate the 95% CIs of our proposed indirect effects under different levels of positive reciprocity beliefs. The results revealed that psychological detachment mediated the link between feeling trusted and work–family conflict when the level of positive reciprocity beliefs was high (indirect effect = 0.08, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.16]), but not when it was low (indirect effect = 0.01, 95% CI = [−.04, 0.07]). The difference between the two indirect effects at plus or minus one standard deviation of positive reciprocity beliefs was also significant (difference = 0.07, 95% CI = [0.01, 0.18]). Thus, Hypothesis 5 was supported.

Discussion

Research has indicated that feeling trusted is related to positive work outcomes for employees, such as enhanced task performance, job engagement and organizational citizenship behavior.^9,10 However, studies have also found that feeling trusted may have negative work outcomes.^8,44 We extended this research by exploring whether feeling trusted may also be related to negative outcomes in employees’ family domain (beyond the immediate workplace context). Grounded in social exchange theory and across a two-wave field study, we found that employees who felt trusted were more likely to go the extra mile, leading to lower psychological detachment and ultimately work–family conflict. Furthermore, we found that the relationship between feeling trusted and psychological detachment was moderated by positive reciprocity beliefs, which reflect the degree to which individuals endorse reciprocity in exchange relationships.^27,28 Finally, our findings indicate that the mediating effect of psychological detachment is stronger among employees who hold higher positive reciprocity beliefs. This verified model has multiple implications for theory and practice.

Theoretical Implications

Our findings contribute to the literature in three ways. First, our research contributes to the literature on feeling trusted by offering a richer picture of the negative effects that feeling trusted may have on employees. Prior research has found that feeling trusted can benefit both organizations and employees.^9,10,25 However, focusing on the positive effect of feeling trusted can mask the underlying costs. Recently, scholars have begun to focus on the dark side of feeling trusted and to challenge the prevailing conclusion that feeling trusted is always beneficial.^8,44 However, this research has mainly focused on work-related outcomes, overlooking the non-work domain. To address this limitation, our research examined the effect of feeling trusted on work–family conflict, thus providing further insights into the negative effects of feeling trusted.

Second, our research contributes to understanding of the antecedents of work–family conflict. Research has found that some negative work-related factors, such as workplace bullying, passive leadership, and financial insecurity, can increase work–family conflict.^12,45,46 However, those studies have not fully revealed the source of work–family conflict, because sometimes negative outcomes can be triggered by positive events.^47,48 Following this logic, we explored and identified an important positive antecedent of work–family conflict (ie, feeling trusted), thereby enriching understanding of the causes of work–family conflict.

Finally, our conclusions shed light on the mechanism underlying the relationship between feeling trusted and work–family conflict. As research exploring the impact of feeling trusted on employees’ work–family conflict is limited, the potential mechanism of this impact remains unclear. Therefore, these findings enrich knowledge of the potential underlying mechanism, showing why and when feeling trusted may increase work–family conflict. In line with social exchange theory, we conjectured that employees who hold stronger positive reciprocity beliefs feel more obligated to reciprocate others’ positive behavior toward them, such as by repaying supervisors’ perceived trust in them. This may in turn cause employees to invest more time and effort in work, resulting in decreased psychological detachment from work while at home. This reduction in psychological detachment weakens their commitment to their family role, which can generate work–family conflict. Thus, our research paints a more complete picture of when and why feeling trusted can lead to work–family conflict for employees.

Practical Implications

Increasing numbers of employees are confronted with work–family conflict. Research has suggested that work–family conflict has negative effects on employees’ physical and mental health and family harmony, as manifested by job burnout, a weakening of the quality of marital relationships, and poorer life satisfaction.^49–51 It is therefore of great practical importance to discover the cause for this conflict. Our research suggests that feeling trusted is a key driver of work–family conflict, particularly in employees with stronger positive reciprocity beliefs. These findings have the following implications for management practice. First, although it is important for employees to repay supervisors’ trust with excellent work performance, they should also be guided to manage their time effectively. Specifically, employees should be encouraged to complete their work tasks efficiently during working hours and avoid bringing work home where possible, as this may engender unnecessary work–family conflict. Second, when supervisors trust their employees, they should remind them to maintain clear boundaries between work and family, because reducing the overlap between these domains can ease the risk of work–family conflict. Third, supervisors should exhibit role modeling behavior for their employees, who tend to regard those higher in the organizational hierarchy as examples to imitate and learn from. Employees are likely to perceive a clear separation between work and family if their supervisors model such a perception.

Limitations and Future Research

Our study, similar to most research, is not without limitations.

First, all of the variables were self-reported by the participants, which may have resulted in common method bias.⁵² We measured our research variables at two time points to minimize this problem, but future researchers seeking to replicate our findings could consider collecting data from multiple sources to further reduce the likelihood of common method bias.

Second, although we collected our data at two time points, our research design did not allow us to draw causal inferences. Therefore, future research should consider examining the identified effects in a laboratory experiment or an intervention study to allow stronger causal inferences to be made. For example, future research could use experimental methods to manipulate feeling trusted before measuring employees’ psychological detachment levels.

Third, we focused only on the boundary conditions of individual factors (ie, positive reciprocity beliefs), yet some situational factors may also moderate the relationship between feeling trusted and psychological detachment, such as the perceived segmentation norm.⁵³ Employees working in an organization with a stronger segmentation norm are less likely to tolerate work-related interruptions to their family life. Future studies could further explore these moderators to provide greater insight into the relationship between feeling trusted and work–family conflict.

Finally, factors other than our control variables may influence work–life conflict. Hence, future research could use control variables such as marital status, role conflict, and the nature of employment to more precisely interpret the relationship between feeling trusted and work–family conflict.

Conclusions

Together, our findings showed that feeling trusted by supervisors can affect employees’ work–family conflict through psychological detachment. We also advanced that positive reciprocity beliefs can moderated this linkage. Specifically, when the level of positive reciprocity beliefs was stronger (vs weak), the mediating effect of psychological detachment was stronger. These findings not only contribute to research on the dark side of feeling trusted by supervisors but also advise that employees should try their best to detach themselves from work during non-working hours to reduce work–family conflict.