Abstract
We build on the social heuristics hypothesis, the literature on the glucose model of self-control, and recent challenges on these hypotheses to investigate whether individuals exhibit a change in degree of trust and reciprocation after consumption of a meal. We induce short-term manipulation of hunger followed by the trust game and a decision on whether to leave personal belongings in an unlocked and unsupervised room. Our results are inconclusive. While, we report hungry individuals trusting and reciprocating more than those who have just consumed a meal in a high trust society, we fail to reject the null with small number of observations (N = 101) and experimental sessions (N = 8). In addition, we find no evidence of short-term hunger having an impact on charitable giving or decisions in public good game.
Highlights
Trust has been the grease in the wheels of historical and modern societies
The post-treatment blood glucose concentrations were slightly lower among the control condition subjects who were offered only water (4.84 mmol/L, not statistically significantly different from pre-treatment value) whereas the treatment condition subjects receiving food showed an increase to 6.78 mmol/L, which is a typical post-digestion level verifying that the meals
Hungry subjects are more cooperative in prisoner’s dilemma (PD) (46% vs. 24% cooperation, t-value 2.95, p = 0.004) and sending back funds in the trust game (140% vs. 107% back transfer, t-value 1.84, p = 0.07)
Summary
Trust has been the grease in the wheels of historical and modern societies. The origins of trust can be investigated from several perspectives. One perspective is the environment an individual is exposed to. Environmental factors contributing to the choice of whether to trust include experiences (Nunn and Wantchekon, 2011; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2011; Peysakhovich and Rand, 2016), culture (Guiso et al, 2009; Bohnet et al, 2010), institutions (Algan and Cahuc, 2010; Alesina and Zhuravskaya, 2011), and even physical appearance (Duarte et al, 2012). The environment and individual lives in, and the clues on the trustworthiness of others she picks up, are important determinants of trust
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