Abstract:The influence of emotional states on trust has drawn much attention. This research attempted to ex_x005fplain how negative emotions and clues about the trustee influence the trusting behaviors,and compared the differences between the two negative emotions ( anger and sadness) by an experiment.In our experiment,the subjects were induced to different negative emotions or neutral feelings with emotional video clips and then turned to the trust game with some clues about the trustees.The results revealed that the subject’s amounts of trust investment were influenced by the trustworthy clues and the emotions the subject experienced.Specifically,in case that the available cues promoted trust,people having negative emotions decreased their trust than those experiencing neutral emotions,but the distrust cues rendered no difference.Furthermore,the result shows that,consistent with the theoretical prediction which argues that angry subjects will render more reliance upon the available clues and schemas than sad ones,these two different kinds of negative emotions influence trust in different ways: compared with the sad ones,angry people significantly increased their amounts of trust investment in the case that the trustee clues promoted trust,and decreased their amounts of trust investment when clues promoted distrust.These findings are discussed in terms of emotional effects on cognitive strategies; this study can be a valuable complement to the Accommodation-Assimilation Model and have implications for trust development within organizations.