Abstract
In this paper we present a new methodology which, while allowing for anonymous interaction, it also makes possible to compare decisions of cooperating or defecting when playing games within a group, according to whether or not players personally trust each other. The design thus goes beyond standard approaches to the role of trust in fostering cooperation, which is restricted to general trust. It also allows considering the role of the topology of the social network involved may play in the level of cooperation found. The results of this work support the idea that personal trust promotes cooperation beyond the level of general trust. We also found that this effect carries over to the whole group, making it more cohesive, but that higher levels of cohesion rely on a particular topology. As a conclusion, we hypothesize that personal trust is a psychological mechanism evolved to make human social life possible in the small groups our ancestors lived in, and that this mechanism persists and plays a role in sustaining cooperation and social cohesion.
Highlights
Current approaches to the evolution of cooperation share the notion that any viable account must assume that cooperation is in the interest of the cooperator
A rational agent is expected to cooperate in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma (IPD) just when it is in its own interest and in addition is able to resist the discount of the future
The highly significant differences found in cooperation between the two experimental conditions –trust and non-trust circle conditions– clearly show that personal trust increases cooperation beyond the baseline level commonly found even in one-shot anonymously played games
Summary
Current approaches to the evolution of cooperation share the notion that any viable account must assume that cooperation is in the interest of the cooperator. We want to contribute to the defense of social preferences by focusing on personal trust, a powerful psychological mechanism that can be seen, from an evolutionary point of view, as a way to solve social dilemmas by making one feel certain that our counterpart will be loyal and choose to cooperate and making one feel committed to cooperate This is achieved, neither by an external threat of punishment, nor by some sort of ruleenforcing authority, but by an affectively grounded, benevolent attitude towards the trusted person that is derived from previous interactions [13,14]. We hypothesize that personal trust generates a characteristic social network of cliques, which is the structure through which cooperation spreads beyond the trust circle (H3) To test these hypotheses, this work integrates several methodologies: questionnaires, an experimental game –an iterated prisoner’s dilemma–, and social network analysis. We have developed an indepth analysis of the structure of the trust networks involved
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