How Trustor and Trustee Emotions Affect Initial Trust: The Mediating Role of Perceived Social Distance

Interpersonal trust is shaped by the emotional states of both parties, yet how a trustor’s incidental emotion and a trustee’s emotional display jointly influence initial trust, and through what mechanisms, remains unclear. We conducted four experiments (total N  = 542) manipulating trustor emotion (anger, happiness, neutral) and trustee emotion across two channels of expression (facial expressions vs. emojis). Across studies, mixed-design ANCOVAs and mediation analyses revealed a consistent pattern. When emotions were conveyed through facial expressions, trustee emotion predominantly determined trust, with no interaction with trustor emotion. In contrast, when conveyed through emojis, trustor and trustee emotions interacted: angry trustors trusted angry trustees more and happy trustees less than happy or neutral trustors. These effects were fully mediated by perceived social distance. Together, the findings identify emotional expression channel as a critical boundary condition for emotion-based trust and demonstrate that incidental emotional similarity can rapidly reduce perceived distance, thereby facilitating trust in symbol-based digital interactions.