Does trust extend beyond the village? Experimental trust and social distance in Cameroon

In this paper we use experimental data from rural Cameroon to quantify the effect of social distance on trust and altruism. Our measure of social distance is relevant to everyday economic interactions: subjects in a Trust Game play with fellow villagers or with someone from a different village. We find that significantly more money is sent when the players are from the same village. Other factors that influence transfers at least as much as the same-village effect are gender, education and membership of rotating credit groups. To test whether Senders are motivated by altruism, they also play a Triple Dictator Game. Senders transfer significantly more money on average in the Trust Game than in the Triple Dictator Game. However, there is also a social distance effect in the Triple Dictator Game. Results from a Risk Game suggest that Trust Game transfers are uncorrelated with attitudes to risk.     

Does the trust game measure trust?

Could altruism explain observed choices in the standard trust game? With dominant altruism, trustors would give more to poor trustees. However, we find trustors to give no more to poor than to rich trustees, confirming trust as the dominant motivation for “trust like” choices.     

Trust and reciprocity: misunderstandings

We contest a reductive view of trust, quite diffused in economics, and in studies influenced by the Game-Theory framework: the idea that trust has necessarily to do with contexts requiring “reciprocation”; or that trust is trust in the other’s reciprocation. A multi-layer cognitive model of trust will be proposed. Trust is not conceived only as an attitude towards the other, implying different kinds of beliefs (evaluations, expectations, beliefs on the other”s motives, etc.), but also as a willingness to rely on others that makes us dependent and vulnerable to them, as well as a concrete act of reliance based on this. Not necessarily we trust people because they will be willing to reciprocate; and we do not necessarily reciprocate for reciprocating. Trust (even “genuine” trust) is based on a variety of motivations ascribed to others and makes prevail the adoption of our needs and goals: from “altruism” to “self-interest”, from reciprocation to norms or to affective reasons.     

Suit the action to the word,the word to the action: Eliciting motives for trust and reciprocity by attitudinal and behavioural measures

Two important primitives of social capital are the disposition to trust and to reciprocate manifested in social life. In this paper, attitudinal and behavioural evidence is used to investigate the nature of the motivations underlying behaviour in Trust and Dictator games. In doing so, we have three aims. First, to find out whether, and to what extent, answers to a questionnaire about attitudes towards trust and civicness predict subjects’ behaviour. Second, to disentangle strategic from other-regarding motivations by comparing behaviour in Trust and Dictator Games. Third, to investigate to what extent a correspondence could be found between subjects’ attitudinal ‘type’ and their behaviour in the two interactive experimental settings. The paper builds on previous work in the area and in particular finds that using surveys to distinguish between the behavioural responses of different attitudinal types–“Trusting” or “Prudent” on the one hand and “Trustworthy” or “Untrustworthy” on the other, allows us to dig deeper into the underlying motivations of the experimental subjects. The self-declared trusting tend to manifest trust by investing more in the risky interaction than the prudent, and the self-declared trustworthy are inclined to return more than the untrustworthy. Moreover, the self-reported trustworthy and untrustworthy tend to manifest positive or negative reciprocity, respectively. The evidence suggests that the former are moved by the intention to reward and the latter by the desire to punish a stingy Sender by returning an even smaller amount than received. This seems to confirm the “multiple self” view (Elster, 1986), whereby in the personality of each individual many components–possibly distant in terms of the motivating sentiments–are gathered together.     

How do altruistic parental transfers affect the welfare gains of marriage?

This paper analyses the effects of altruistic parental transfers on the welfare gains of marriage. To that end, it develops a sequential game which, in a first stage, determines the optimum level of the transfer between the altruistic donor (the parent) and the recipient (the daughter/son). In the second stage, the levels of consumption and provision of a family good are deduced by way of a Nash bargaining solution, with the threat point being represented by divorce. We find that the degree of altruism of the recipient has a null effect on the gains in welfare derived from the marriage by the recipient’s spouse, and a positive effect on those derived by the recipient. Additionally, the degree of altruism of the donor has a positive effect on the gains in welfare derived from the marriage by the recipient’s spouse, and an ambiguous effect on those derived by the recipient.     

Individual characteristics and behavior in repeated games: an experimental study

Using a laboratory experiment, we investigate whether a variety of behaviors in repeated games are related to an array of individual characteristics that are popular in economics: risk attitude, time preference, trust, trustworthiness, altruism, strategic skills in one-shot matrix games, compliance with first-order stochastic dominance, ability to plan ahead, and gender. We do find some systematic relationships. A subject’s compliance with first-order stochastic dominance as well as, possibly, patience, gender, and altruism have some systematic effects on her behavior in repeated games. At the level of a pair of subjects who are playing a repeated game, each subject’s gender as well as, possibly, patience and ability to choose an available dominant strategy in a one-shot matrix game systematically affect the frequency of the cooperate–cooperate outcome. However, overall, the number of systematic relationships is surprisingly small.     

关于信任的博弈分析——基于个体的自利理性和社会理性

信任的根本在于不完全信息和有限理性,信任是个体弥补自己理性不足的一种策略.所以,信任分析无法在个体的自利理性下完成,需要扩展个体理性的范畴.将个体理性扩展为自利理性和社会理性,利用理性的这种二元特性,重新解释了两个具有代表性的博弈模型--蜈蚣博弈和信任博弈.这不但对信任问题提出了一种新的分析框架,而且还解决了博弈分析的困境.这说明,对个体理性的扩展是合适的,个体的社会理性是经济学不可忽视的一部分.     

The Relationship between Behavioral and Attitudinal Trust: A Cross-cultural Study

We study the relationship between trust in an experiment and trust measured by means of popular survey items in different countries. Students from Chile, Colombia, India, Mexico and Sweden participate in a public goods game experiment and answer a set of standard attitudinal survey questions about trust. We find that behavioral trust and attitudinal trust significantly differ among countries. Behavioral trust is highest in Sweden, followed by Latin America, and lowest in India. Attitudinal trust is highest in Chile and Sweden, followed by India and Mexico, and lowest in Colombia. Further, the predictive power of survey items also differs among countries. Trust measured by survey items is significantly related to behavioral trust in some but not in all societies. No single survey item predicts actual trust across all countries. Plausible explanations of the inconsistent relationship between behavioral and attitudinal trust across countries are discussed.     

Dictator monopolies and essential goods: experimental evidence

Monopolists set prices and if the good is unessential this may place the consumer in an uncomfortable position. But if the good is essential the consumer faces a pay-to-live or -die choice. Dictator and ultimatum games are superficially similar in that one game offers the right of refusal, while the other does not. The dictator monopoly is, however, not a game, and behaviour could be radically different in the market environment versus game environment. We recast the dictator game as a dictator monopoly experiment and find that the fairness characteristic of the game evaporates quickly as rounds progress.     

Do people care about social context? Framing effects in dictator games

Many previous experiments document that behavior in multi-person settings responds to the name of the game and the labeling of strategies. With a few exceptions, these studies cannot tell whether frames affect preferences or beliefs. In three large experiments, we investigate whether social framing effects are also present in Dictator games. Since only one of the subjects makes a decision, the frame can affect behavior merely through preferences. In all the experiments, we find that behavior is insensitive to social framing. We discuss how to reconcile the absence of social framing effects in Dictator games with the presence of social framing effects in Ultimatum games.     

Are benevolent dictators altruistic in groups? A within-subject design

We use a within-subject experimental design to investigate whether systematic relationships exist across distinct features of individual preferences: altruism in a two-person context, risk aversion in monetary outcomes, and social preferences in a group context. We find that altruism is related to demographic variables, including years of education, gender, and age. Perhaps most importantly, self allocation in a two-person dictator game is related to social preferences in a group context. Participants who are more generous in a dictator game are more likely to vote against their self-interest in a group tax redistribution game which we interpret to be an expression of social preferences.     

Promises and lies: can observers detect deception in written messages

We design a laboratory experiment to examine predictions of trustworthiness in a novel three-person trust game. We investigate whether and why observers of the game can predict the trustworthiness of hand-written communications. Observers report their perception of the trustworthiness of messages, and make predictions about the senders’ behavior. Using observers’ decisions, we are able to classify messages as “promises” or “empty talk.” Drawing from substantial previous research, we hypothesize that certain factors influence whether a sender is likely to honor a message and/or whether an observer perceives the message as likely to behonored: the mention of money; the use of encompassing words; and message length. We find that observers have more trust in longer messages and “promises”; promises that mention money are significantly more likely to be broken; and observers trust equally in promises that do and do not mention money. Overall, observers perform slightly better than chance at predicting whether a message will be honored. We attribute this result to observers’ ability to distinguish promises from empty talk, and to trust promises more than empty talk. However, within each of these two categories, observers are unable to discern between messages that senders will honor from those that they will not.     

How to identify trust and reciprocity

This paper uses a three-games (or triadic) design to identify trusting and reciprocating behavior. A large literature on single-game trust and reciprocity experiments is based on the implicit assumption that subjects do not have altruistic or inequality-averse other-regarding preferences. Such experimental designs test compound hypotheses that include the hypothesis that other-regarding preferences do not affect behavior. In contrast, experiments with the triadic design do discriminate between transfers resulting from trust or reciprocity and transfers resulting from other-regarding preferences that are not conditional on the behavior of others. Decomposing trust from altruism and reciprocity from altruism or inequality aversion is critical to obtaining empirical information that can guide the process of constructing models that can increase the empirical validity of game theory.     

Is there selection bias in laboratory experiments? The case of social and risk preferences

Laboratory experiments are frequently used to examine the nature of individuals’ social and risk preferences and inform economic theory. However, it is unknown whether the preferences of volunteer participants are representative of the population from which the participants are drawn, or whether they differ due to selection bias. To answer this question, we measured the preferences of 1,173 students in a classroom experiment using a trust game and a lottery choice task. Separately, we invited all students to participate in a laboratory experiment using common recruitment procedures. To evaluate whether there is selection bias, we compare the social and risk preferences of students who eventually participated in a laboratory experiment to those who did not, and find that they do not differ significantly. However, we also find that people who sent less in a trust game were more likely to participate in a laboratory experiment, and discuss possible explanations for this behavior.     

A trust game in loss domain

In standard trust games, no trust is the default, and trust generates a potential gain. We investigate a reframed trust game in which full trust is default and where no trust generates a loss. We find significantly lower levels of trust and trustworthiness in the loss domain when full trust is default than in the gain domain when no trust is default. As a consequence, trust is on average profitable in the gain domain, but not in the loss domain. We also find that subjects respond more positively to higher trust in the loss domain than in the gain domain.     

Internet cautions: Experimental games with internet partners

We report the results of experiments conducted over the internet between two different laboratories. Each subject at one site is matched with a subject at another site in a trust game experiment. We investigate whether subjects believe they are really matched with another person, and suggest a methodology for ensuring that subjects’ beliefs are accurate. Results show that skepticism can lead to misleading results. If subjects do not believe they are matched with a real person, they trust too much: i.e., they trust the experimenter rather than their partner. JEL Classification C9     

家族企业信任治理的相机选择

华人家族企业的特殊信任是基于忠诚原则上的私人信任。用布赖恩特(Bryant)协调博弈来描述信任,家族主义信任可能形成最优的帕累托协调博弈结果,能较好解决代理中的信任问题,但不能或难以解决随着组织规模或交易的复杂性增加时出现的代理能力不足问题。信任治理的相机选择,则取决于信任在特定文化制度环境下的治理成本结构。必须弱化家族主义信任,加强社会普遍信任环境、制度的建设。     

Gender differences in trust and reciprocity: evidence from a large-scale experiment with heterogeneous subjects

This article examines gender differences in an experimental trust game. Recent studies have shown that men trust more and that women are more reciprocal in laboratory experiments. Participants in these studies, however, are typically university students who may not be representative of the entire population. In this study, we use data from a large-scale experiment with heterogeneous subjects who are representative of the German population. We find that men exhibit not only more trusting behaviour, but also more reciprocating behaviour than women. Moreover, our results are indicative of age-dependent gender differences. For men, we find an inverse U-shaped relationship between age, on the one hand, and both trust and reciprocity, on the other; however, we do not find age effects for women.     

Social division,trust, and reciprocity among Chinese inmates

Social capital promotes cooperation between people and, in turn, economic growth and stability. Trust and trustworthiness are components of social capital that are associated with economic success. This paper provides insight into the impact of social division on cooperative behavior. We use the one-shot investment game to measure trust and reciprocity among inmates in a Chinese prison, which offers an institutional setting that allows us to examine how social interaction, or a lack thereof, fosters cooperation. Results show that the variation in social division through physical separation does not have a significant impact on cooperative behavior among inmates. However, inmates are more trusting than our benchmark group of university students even though inmates have faced significant life challenges. While social interaction fails to boost trust and reciprocity, childhood experience and family environment mold social preferences. In particular, reciprocity deteriorates for those who have migrant mothers.     

Playing the trust game with other people’s money

We experimentally investigate to what extent people trust and honor trust when they are playing with other people’s money (OPM). We adopt the well-known trust game by Berg et al. (in Games Econ. Behav. 10:122–142, 1995), with the difference that the trustor (sender) who sends money to the trustee (receiver) does this on behalf of a third party. We find that senders who make decisions on behalf of others do not behave significantly different from senders in our baseline trust game who manage their own money. But receivers return significantly less money when senders send a third party’s money. As a result, trust is only profitable in the baseline trust game, but not in the OPM treatment. The treatment effect among the receivers is gender specific. Women return significantly less money in OPM than in baseline, while there is no such treatment effect among men. Moreover, women return significantly less than men in the OPM treatment.