Personality impressions predict intergroup trust behaviour of Southern Chinese.

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate whether the personality impressions Southern Chinese formed on people who were from South China or North China predicted intergroup trust. Study 1 adopted the one-shot trust game to measure intergroup trust, in which the participant decided the amounts of money they would like to invest with the members of the ingroup and the members of the outgroup. After that, they assessed the personality traits of the two groups with a set of trait words. Results suggested that participants invested more average amounts of money with the outgroup than with the ingroup, and the investment in the northerners was significantly correlated with the trait impressions of the northerners. Study 2 conducted a survey to specify the positive and negative aspects of personality impressions made on the two groups. Results revealed that some untrustworthy and dislike traits were regarded as the negative traits in the ingroup rather than in the outgroup, though participants distinguished the positive personality traits between the two groups. The complexity-extremity theory was applied to explain the results of preferring to trust the outgroup over the ingroup in relation to the representation of personality impressions of the two groups.