Abstract
In adolescence, aspects of cognition that are required to deal with complex cooperation situations, such as mentalising and social value orientation, are still in development. In the Trust Game, cooperation may lead to better outcomes for both players, but can also lead to exploitation by the trustee. In the present study, we explore how mindreading, a crucial aspect of mentalising, and social value orientation (whether someone is prosocial or proself) are related to trust. In a group of 217 students (51% girls, Mage = 15.1) social value orientation, mindreading and trust (using the Trust Game) were measured. The result show that social value orientation moderates the relation between mindreading and trust. In the group of prosocials, we find no correlation between mindreading and trust. In the group of proselfs, mindreading is negatively correlated to trust, indicating that proselfs use their mentalising skills to assess that the trustee is likely to exploit them.
Highlights
People differ considerably in their motives underlying decision making in situations in which selfinterest is at odds with collective interest
To further investigate the nature of this moderation, simple slope analyses were performed separately for the prosocials and proselfs. These analyses revealed that in the group of prosocials there was no significant relation between mindreading and trust [Bmindreading = 0.09, t(93) = 0.36, p = 0.72]
Trust was positively correlated with trustworthiness [r(153) = 0.33, p < 0.001] and this correlation remained significant when controlling for age and sex [r(153) = 0.32, p < 0.001]
Summary
People differ considerably in their motives underlying decision making in situations in which selfinterest is at odds with collective interest (i.e., social dilemmas). Some people focus on getting the best out of the situation for themselves, while others try to make sure that all people involved get a fair share (Charness and Rabin, 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2002). These motives reflect proself vs prosocial value orientations, respectively. These different social value orientations can be identified during adolescence. The present study investigates how social cognitive skills in adolescence interact with social value orientation (SVO) during decision-making in social dilemmas
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