Expectations Of Trustworthiness Research Articles

Navigating the Social Environment: Linking Motivations, Impressions, and Behaviors Via a Sampling Approach to Trustworthiness.

Our understanding of impression formation comes from experiments constraining participants' control over information sampling. This limits our understanding of how people sample information when forming impressions as well as the effects of self-generated samples on impressions. Our paradigm allows participants to actively collect information samples. This work investigates how people explore the social environment and how sampled information informs resulting impressions. Four experiments tested theoretically-driven predictions regarding information sampling patterns under interested and disinterested information search. Under interested search, participants truncated the sampling of social targets showing early untrustworthy behavior. Under disinterested search, participants sampled extensively and systematically, avoiding small-sample biases. The sampled information, once obtained, accurately determines final impressions. Moreover, we documented a direct link between sampled information and subsequent behaviors (partner selection in trust games, trustworthiness expectations). By investigating sampling-based trustworthiness impressions, the present research informs the origins of trustworthiness and sampling accounts of judgment and decision-making.

Loneliness is associated with more trust but worse trustworthiness expectations.

Subjective feelings of loneliness emerge due to unsatisfactory social relationships, representing a major risk for mental and physical well-being. Despite its social nature, evidence on how loneliness affects social behaviours and expectations is lacking. Using Bayesian analyses and economic games, we show in three different studies that lonelier individuals trusted their partners to a greater extent despite less favourable trustworthiness expectations, showing a greater discrepancy between their trusting behaviours and their expectations of others' trustworthiness. Such discrepancy was reversed in extravert individuals who also reported to be less lonely. These results provide evidence on two opposing effects of loneliness as a motivator for social connections and promoter of social withdrawal, and demonstrate the moderating role of personality traits. This work contributes to a better understanding of how loneliness impacts social behaviour and social expectations, with important downstream clinical implications for varying health conditions associated with heightened feelings of loneliness.

A 10 nation exploration of trustworthiness in the workplace

In the context of the workplace, and especially in today’s often fast-paced, cross-cultural and virtual work environment, a basic type of trust—“swift trust”—forms quickly based on cognitive processes and beliefs, or stereotypes, of another. Interpersonal trust is in large part based on these contextualized assessments of the extent to which another person is trustworthy. While trust across cultural boundaries has been examined, there is a lack of research investigating how trustworthiness is determined cross-culturally, especially with respect to what heuristics are used in the development of trust. The current project explored how trustworthiness is conceptualized and described for both colleagues and supervisors across 10 nations using the Stereotype Content Model. Qualitative descriptors of trustworthy supervisors and colleagues were coded based on the importance ascribed to warmth and competence, and these codes were used as the basis for cluster analyses to examine similarities and differences in descriptors of role-based trustworthiness. Both differences and similarities in the expectations of trustworthiness were found across the national samples. Some cultures emphasized both warmth and competence as equally important components to developing trustworthiness, some emphasized only warmth, while others emphasized only competence. Variations of trustworthiness stereotypes were found in all but two national samples based on role expectations for supervisors and colleagues. Data from the GLOBE project related to societal cultural practices and cultural leadership prototypes were drawn on to discuss findings.

Expectations of trustworthiness in cross-status interactions

Although the literature on trust is vast, little is known about the attributes that trigger or inhibit trusting others we do not know. Using a vignette version of the trust game, we addressed the role that social standing plays in estimating trustworthiness of strangers in cross-status interactions in Chile, a non-WEIRD context also characterized by high inequality and social segregation. While we found a positive relationship between social status and generalized trust, we found no relationship between the social status of trustors and trusting behavior in the game. Besides, trustees’ income was the most important attribute for trustors to decide how much to trust. We also found that higher-income trustees are less trusted in general, particularly by lower-status trustors. Finally, the results revealed that the influence of income differences on trust was higher for lower-status participants: they are more trustful of others of similar status. We did not observe a similar effect of ingroup favoritism on trust among higher-status participants. Thus, higher levels of relational or particularized trust were found among participants of lower social status compared to those of higher social status.

Does young adults’ life satisfaction promote tolerance towards immigrants? The role of political satisfaction and social trust

Much prior research relies on the idea that antipathy towards immigrants is primarily driven by natives’ perceptions of the threat that immigrants represent to their economic, cultural or national well-being. Yet little is known about whether subjective well-being affects attitudes toward immigrants. This study aimed to examine whether life satisfaction would foster tolerance towards immigrants over time via the indirect influence of political satisfaction and social trust. The sample comprised young native adults (N = 1352; M age = 22.72; SD = 3.1) in Sweden. The results revealed that young adults who were satisfied with important life domains were more likely to extend their satisfaction towards the political system, which consequently resulted in a generalised expectation of trustworthiness and a widening of their circles of trusted others. This then translates into more positive attitudes toward immigrants. The findings provide evidence that it is the causal relationship between political satisfaction and social trust (rather than social trust in itself) which promotes the positive impact of life satisfaction on tolerance towards immigrants. The study highlights that fostering political satisfaction and social trust may play an important role in shaping young people’s positive attitudes towards immigrants.

Directed trust and trustworthiness in a social network: An experimental investigation

Trust and trustworthiness are important in social relationships. Levels of trust and trustworthiness are likely to depend on “social” utility; the magnitude of which is influenced by the social context governing individual relationships. Social networks are an example of such a social context. This paper investigates how social networks influence trust and trustworthiness by blending social network analysis with experimental economics methodology in two separate experiments. We show that trust and trustworthiness are higher for individuals who are more closely connected; in both cases, this relationship tapers off beyond second degree friendships. We also find that people tend to trust more central (popular) individuals. However, being more central (popular) has little influence on one's levels of trust and trustworthiness. We find these effects on trust to be only partially driven by the expectation of trustworthiness. We thus document evidence of a bias toward more closely connected and more popular individuals.

Group-based biases influence learning about individual trustworthiness

People often have generalised expectations of trustworthiness about ingroup and outgroup members, based on previous direct and indirect experience with these groups. How do these prior biases interact with new experiences when learning about individual group members' trustworthiness? These three studies are the first to examine the effect of group-level biases on learning about individuals' trustworthiness. Participants from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom played iterated Trust Games with trustworthy and untrustworthy members of both ingroups and outgroups. We show that the influence of group membership on trust decisions depended on the valence of the interactions with individual group members. When interacting with trustworthy partners, people displayed outgroup favouritism throughout the game, investing higher in outgroup members than ingroup members. However, for untrustworthy partners, initial outgroup favouritism disappeared, and ingroup and outgroup members were equally distrusted by the end of the game. Our work suggests that when individual experience is integrated with group-based biases, group membership influences trust decisions over time, but mostly when experiences are positive. These findings are discussed in relation to complexity-extremity theory and previous work on learning in the Trust Game.

Being an online celebrity: Norms and expectations of YouTube’s beauty community

This paper is based on 22 months of online fieldwork examining YouTube’s beauty community, specifically the beauty guru Bubz, her uploaded content, and user comments. We aim to conceptualize central community-specific dynamics and practices, particularly those related to self-presentation and identity management and their affordances for legitimized online popularity. We explain how the guru’s successful online persona is based on a performative blend of relatable, down-to-earth values paired with a more aspirational and worthy of emulation side. Being an “ordinary-user-turned-famous” is seemingly an advantage given the high relevance of authenticity when judging online celebrities. However, her inherent ordinariness also increases expectations of trustworthiness and honesty, precisely because she is, and continuous to perform daily, a regular user.

Everyday dynamics in generalized social and political trust

We applied the traits as density distributions of states approach to generalized expectations of trustworthiness, namely, social trust and trust in politicians. Using an experience sampling study (N=47), we assessed state social trust and trust in politicians four times a day for 2weeks. Within-person variability was found to be low but meaningful as it was predicted by variations in affect, interactional trust, and prior experiences. There was high stability in interindividual differences in the mean levels of state trustworthiness expectations and in the levels of within-person variability. Our study provides a comprehensive understanding of stability and variability in generalized expectations of trustworthiness and indicates broad applicability of the traits as density distributions of states approach.

The Effect of Endogenous Contract Selection on Budgetary Slack: An Experimental Examination of Trust, Distrust, and Trustworthiness

This study examines the effect of endogenous contract selection on budgetary slack using two slack-inducing contracts found in the literature: a trust contract where the superior must accept any feasible budget submitted by the subordinate and a discretion contract where the superior can accept or reject the budget. We find that both contracts generate less budgetary slack when they are endogenously selected by the superior than when they are randomly assigned by the experimenter. Exit questionnaire responses support our expectation that selecting a trust contract signals trust and expectations of trustworthiness whereas selecting a discretion contract signals distrust and an increased willingness to reject unreasonable budgets. We find the greatest level of efficiency with the endogenously selected discretion contract, which is not significantly different in efficiency than the optimal hurdle contract under traditional agency assumptions. Thus, our results suggest that endogenous contract selection improves efficiency whether it signals trust or distrust and signaling distrust may be optimal for the firm in some contracting settings.

Trust: An Integrative Review from a Person–Situation Perspective

Trust is a key aspect of various social interactions. Correspondingly, trust has been heavily studied across different scientific disciplines. However, an integration of the diverse research and literature is still missing. Addressing this issue, we review several hundred articles on interpersonal trust among strangers and integrate them into a coherent framework, explaining trust behavior among unfamiliar agents based on an interaction between situational features and distinct personality characteristics. Understanding trust as a decision under risk, we distill 3 core components of trust behavior from the extant literature: attitudes toward risky prospects (i.e., risk aversion and loss aversion), trustworthiness expectations, and betrayal sensitivity. Each of these refers to a distinct set of causal determinants, including personality characteristics (anxiety/fear, trustworthiness, and forgiveness) which can be localized in the space defined by models of basic personality structure (e.g., the Five-Factor Model and the HEXACO model of personality). In sum, the review contributes to the understanding of trust behavior by linking and integrating the findings from various fields of trust research. Additionally, it provides fruitful directions and implications for future research.

Understanding trustworthiness: using response latencies from CATI surveys to learn about the “crucial” variable in trust research

Research on trustworthiness and trust behavior so far has followed different methodological approaches and has generated conflicting evidence regarding their interrelationships. While several authors follow the definition of trustworthiness as a belief or a formed expectancy by Person A about Person B to do X (usually to reward trust), different hypotheses can be derived regarding its formation, depending on whether one treats trustworthiness as incentive-based or as a propensity or disposition. Additionally, distinct measurement approaches for trustworthiness exist, depending on the mode of data collection. With theoretical claims that trustworthiness represents “the crucial variable” (Hardin in Trust, 2006) for understanding and explaining successful cooperation based on trust, the article proposes the use of para-data in the form of response latency measurement to enhance the understanding of the thought processes behind forming an assessment of trustworthiness. The study uses pooled data from two CATI surveys conducted in Germany in 2012 to test hypotheses on the underlying cognitive process of forming an expectation of trustworthiness by applying the techniques of both response latency measurement and Cox regression models. We find that the applied survey measures of trustworthiness generate inconsistent results regarding the underlying process of forming expectations. Consequences for future research are discussed.

Trust in me, trust in you: A social projection account of the link between personality, cooperativeness, and trustworthiness expectations

Although trust is a key aspect of social behavior, individual differences in trust are not yet sufficiently understood. Addressing this issue, the present study investigated the link between trait Honesty–Humility, behavioral tendencies in economic games, and trustworthiness expectations. Based on a social projection account, it was hypothesized that individuals base their trustworthiness expectations on their own trustworthiness, i.e., their tendency to cooperate (as opposed to exploiting others). As predicted, Honesty–Humility was positively associated with trustworthiness expectations. In line with the social projection hypothesis, this relation was fully mediated through cooperativeness in the Dictator Game, but not through entitlement in the Ultimatum Game. Cooperativeness (as driven by trait Honesty–Humility) is thus an important determinant of individual differences in trust.

Default distrust? An fMRI investigation of the neural development of trust and cooperation

The tendency to trust and to cooperate increases from adolescence to adulthood. This social development has been associated with improved mentalizing and age-related changes in brain function. Thus far, there is limited imaging data investigating these associations. We used two trust games with a trustworthy and an unfair partner to explore the brain mechanisms underlying trust and cooperation in subjects ranging from adolescence to mid-adulthood. Increasing age was associated with higher trust at the onset of social interactions, increased levels of trust during interactions with a trustworthy partner and a stronger decline in trust during interactions with an unfair partner. Our findings demonstrate a behavioural shift towards higher trust and an age-related increase in the sensitivity to others' negative social signals. Increased brain activation in mentalizing regions, i.e. temporo-parietal junction, posterior cingulate and precuneus, supported the behavioural change. Additionally, age was associated with reduced activation in the reward-related orbitofrontal cortex and caudate nucleus during interactions with a trustworthy partner, possibly reflecting stronger expectations of trustworthiness. During unfair interactions, age-related increases in anterior cingulate activation, an area implicated in conflict monitoring, may mirror the necessity to inhibit pro-social tendencies in the face of the partner's actual levels of cooperation.

Demystifying trust: Experimental evidence from Cambodia and Thailand

We report the results of a trust survey and public goods experiment conducted with high school students in rural Thailand and Cambodia that together help clarify the dynamics at work in sustaining economic cooperation within these two third-world communities. We find that standard survey measures of trust employed by the World Values Survey, which form the basis of most macro-empirical investigations of trust and political-economic development, are not useful for predicting contributions to a public goods game. Expectations, on the other hand, profoundly influence contributions and do so independently of trust levels. However, this influence is complex and depends on the distribution of player types. We observe a distribution similar to previous studies, with the largest group, principled reciprocators, updating their behavior quickly based on expectations of trustworthiness. Indeed, this study suggests that trustworthiness in particular is more important than trust in general and further challenges ‘a-rational’ theories of trust.

Responding to trust breaches: The domain specificity of trust and the role of affect

Trust researchers have called for additional work examining trust breaches and trust erosion, as well as an explicit inclusion of affect in trust models. This paper directly responds to these calls. Based on a critical analysis and extension of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman's (1995) integrative trust model, we examine the relative amount of positive affect associated with each dimension of trustworthiness (i.e., ability, integrity and benevolence). We further explore how breaches of different trustworthiness expectations for a particular joint activity influence trust erosion of the overall relationship. Finally, we identify specific negative emotions that mediate trust breaches and trust erosion.

How do We Learn to Trust? A Confirmatory Tetrad Analysis of the Sources of Generalized Trust

In this paper we ask whether individuals decide that people are generally trustworthy or untrustworthy by extrapolating from their experiences in localized interactions or whether a more fixed predisposition drives assessments of trustworthiness. These two contrasting theoretical perspectives on generalized trust can be translated into empirically testable models and adjudicated using confirmatory tetrad analysis. This paper is among the first substantive applications of confirmatory tetrad analysis and illustrates an important advantage of this technique—the ability to distinguish between causal and reflective indicators of a latent variable. We find that individuals develop a generalized expectation of trustworthiness based on their experiences with different groups of people in localized settings. We demonstrate the robustness of our results across disparate samples and spatially dissimilar survey sites.

Decomposing trust and trustworthiness

What motivates people to trust and be trustworthy? Is trust solely “calculative,” based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and trustworthiness only reciprocity? Employing a within-subject design, we run investment and dictator game experiments in Russia, South Africa and the United States. Additionally, we measured risk preferences and expectations of return. Expectations of return account for most of the variance in trust, but unconditional kindness also matters. Variance in trustworthiness is mainly accounted for by unconditional kindness, while reciprocity plays a comparatively small role. There exists some heterogeneity in motivation but people behave surprisingly similarly in the three countries studied.

Is Trust a Bad Investment?

This paper examines whether trust is an investment decision under uncertainty, based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and whether trustworthiness is reciprocity, conditional on one's counterpart's behavior. In experiments run in Russia, South Africa and the United States, we find that only about one third of the subjects who trust expect to make money and that reciprocity matters in the United States but hardly in Russia and South Africa. On average, trust and trustworthiness behavior is significantly related to warm-glow kindness - with the exception of women's trust, which is almost exclusively accounted for by expectations of return. One-shot trust appears to pay for some but not for others.

Trust and Expected Trustworthiness: Experimental Evidence From Zimbabwean Villages

An economic experiment involving 24 small, tightly knit communities allows us to distinguish between trusting or trust-like behaviour based on expectational and non-expectational motivations. A model linking trusting behaviour to expectations of trustworthiness explains over half of the variation across communities. However, the estimated parameters are different (while being similarly well defined) for traditional and resettled communities. This is taken as evidence that non-expectational motivations are at work and vary with community type. Both the data and certain stylised facts suggest that altruistic motivations matter less and motivations relating to a desire to 'community-build' matter more in resettled communities. Trust is valuable. It 'is an important lubricant of a social system. It is extremely efficient; it saves a lot of trouble to have a fair degree of reliance on other people's word' (Arrow, 1974, p. 23). Empirically, trust is associated with higher rates of economic growth, and the emergence and effective functioning of large-scale organisations, including governments (Knack and Keefer, 1997; Fukuyama, 1995; LaPorta et al., 1997). How, then, can we promote trusting behaviour? The answer to this question depends on how trusting behaviour is motivated. If it is motivated by an expectation of trustworthiness, its dynamics are codetermined with those of trustworthiness and its promotion reduces to the promotion of trustworthiness. But if it is also motivated by other factors, its dynamics may be at least partially independent of those of trustworthiness and it may be appropriate to promote trusting behaviour independently or as a means of promoting trustworthiness. Ultimately the two must grow together - what is at issue here is the appropriate