Abstract
Without prompting, stratified randomly selected employees addressed communication improvements at their manufacturing facility. More than one quarter expressed distrust in their leaders. Responses were coded with two distrust conceptualizations: the opposite features of Butler and Cantrell's trust dimensions and Bies and Tripp's actions that violate trust. Narratives were also coded for target of distrust and language intensity. Narratives exposed the communication-distrust link proposed by scholars, reinforcing the behavioral foundation of distrust as a psychological construct. Results challenge the position that distrust is the opposite of trust. Peaks of language intensity occurred for various single dimensions and combinations of distrust dimensions.
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