ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1610495
This article is part of the Research TopicResignation and Strategic Retention: Shaping the Future WorkforceView all 10 articles
Smiles or Struggles? How Trust (In)congruence Influences subordinates' Ambivalent Relational Identification and Upward Ingratiation
Provisionally accepted
Xiaodong Ma1
Minmin Zhang2*- 1Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China
- 2The Army Infantry College of PLA, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China
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Recent research on trust in organizational behavior has largely centered on perceived leader trust (PLT), shedding light on how being trusted influences employee behavior. However, this focus has often neglected expected leader trust (ELT)—employees' internal expectations of being trusted—thus limiting insight into behavioral differences and the psychological mechanisms driven by trust discrepancies. To address this gap, the present study incorporates both ELT and PLT to provide a more holistic understanding of subordinates' psychological dynamics and behavioral responses in trust relationships. Grounded in relational identity theory, we investigate how distinct trust configurations affect upward ingratiation (UI) and examine the mediating role of ambivalent relational identity (ARI). Employing a mediated Rising Ridge Congruence Asymmetry approach, we analyzed three-wave dyadic data from 330 supervisor–subordinate pairs. The findings reveal that: (1) UI is significantly lower when ELT and PLT are aligned; (2) When trust discrepancy is held constant, higher overall trust levels—particularly high ELT—are associated with increased UI; (3) Given the same average trust level and magnitude of discrepancy, UI is more pronounced when ELT exceeds PLT than when PLT exceeds ELT; (4) Across all trust configurations, ARI significantly mediates the relationship between ELT–PLT configurations and UI, indicating that identity conflict stemming from trust misalignment is a key psychological mechanism behind strategic ingratiation. This study extends the theoretical scope of trust research, offers deeper insight into its dynamic nature, and provides new empirical support for applying relational identity theory in trust-related contexts.
Keywords: Expected Leader Trust, Perceived Leader Trust, Upward Ingratiation, Ambivalent Relational Identification, Rising Ridge Congruence Asymmetry
Received: 12 Apr 2025; Accepted: 07 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Minmin Zhang, zmmplaaic@163.com
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