In this experiment, we examine depersonalized ingroup trust as a function of group importance and anxiety. We expected that depersonalized ingroup trust would be stronger in more important social groups. We further predicted that anxiety would moderate the relationship between group importance and depersonalized ingroup trust, so that in high-importance social groups, but not within low-importance social groups, anxiety would increase depersonalized ingroup trust. By contrast, for low importance groups, anxiety should not affect depersonalized trust, but should increase interpersonal trust instead. These predictions were supported, even after controlling for baseline levels of general trust in others as well as for the presence of non-anxiety emotion states. The article discusses the theoretical and empirical links between anxiety, uncertainty, and decisions to trust in collective contexts.
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