Do the Reciprocal Trust Less?

We study the intrapersonal relationship between trust and reciprocity in a laboratory experiment. Reciprocal subjects trust significantly more than selfish ones. This finding raises questions about theories of social preferences which predict that “fairer” players should trust less.

[1]  Charles A. Holt,et al.  Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects , 2002 .

[2]  J. Carpenter,et al.  Playing both roles in the trust game , 2003 .

[3]  H. Kelley,et al.  Social interaction basis of cooperators' and competitors' beliefs about others. , 1970 .

[4]  Catherine C. Eckel,et al.  Is Trust a Risky Decision? , 2004 .

[5]  Klaus M. Schmidt,et al.  The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism--Experimental Evidence and New Theories. , 2005 .

[6]  Laura Schechter,et al.  Traditional Trust Measurement and the Risk Confound: An Experiment in Rural Paraguay , 2007 .

[7]  Urs Fischbacher,et al.  z-Tree - Zurich toolbox for readymade economic experiments: experimenter's manual , 1999 .

[8]  James C. Cox,et al.  How to identify trust and reciprocity , 2004, Games Econ. Behav..

[9]  Armin Falk,et al.  A Theory of Reciprocity , 2001, Games Econ. Behav..

[10]  Gary E. Bolton,et al.  ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition , 2000 .

[11]  E. Fehr,et al.  Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments , 1999, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[12]  E. Fehr,et al.  Reciprocity as a contract enforcement device: experimental evidence , 1997 .

[13]  Uwe Sunde,et al.  Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Prevalence, Behavior and Success , 2006, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[14]  Colin Camerer Behavioral Game Theory , 1990 .

[15]  Charles Bellemare,et al.  On Representative Trust , 2003 .

[16]  U. Fischbacher,et al.  Are People Conditionally Cooperative? Evidence from a Public Goods Experiment , 2001 .

[17]  Ernst Fehr,et al.  Chapter 8 The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism – Experimental Evidence and New Theories , 2006 .

[18]  E. Fehr A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation , 1998 .

[19]  Joyce E. Berg,et al.  Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History , 1995 .

[20]  Martin Dufwenberg,et al.  Measuring Beliefs in an Experimental Lost Wallet Game , 2000, Games Econ. Behav..

[21]  U. Fischbacher z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments , 1999 .

[22]  Stephen F. Knack,et al.  Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation , 1997 .

[23]  James Andreoni,et al.  What Do Bargainers' Preferences Look Like? Experiments with a Convex Ultimatum Game , 2003 .

[24]  R. Zeckhauser,et al.  Trust, Risk and Betrayal , 2003 .

[25]  Armin Falk,et al.  Discrimination and In-Group Favoritism in a Citywide Trust Experiment , 2007 .

[26]  Uwe Sunde,et al.  The Intergenerational Transmission of Risk and Trust Attitudes , 2008, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[27]  Raúl López-Pérez,et al.  Introducing Social Norms in Game Theory , 2006 .

[28]  Uwe Sunde,et al.  Individual Risk Attitudes: New Evidence from a Large, Representative, Experimentally-Validated Survey , 2005, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[29]  Charles Bellemare,et al.  On Representative Social Capital , 2004, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[30]  Robert Kurzban,et al.  Experiments investigating cooperative types in humans: a complement to evolutionary theory and simulations. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[31]  C. Puppe,et al.  Testing (beliefs about) social preferences: Evidence from an experimental coordination game , 2005 .

[32]  Armin Falk,et al.  Performance Pay and Multi-Dimensional Sorting: Productivity, Preferences and Gender , 2006, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[33]  I. Bohnet,et al.  Decomposing trust and trustworthiness , 2006 .

[34]  On the Role of Role Reversal — Remarks on Charness and Rabin , 2003 .

[35]  Rachel T. A. Croson,et al.  Trust and gender: An examination of behavior and beliefs in the Investment Game , 2008 .

[36]  Serge-Christophe Kolm,et al.  Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity , 2006 .

[37]  Klaus M. Schmidt,et al.  Fairness and contract design , 2007 .