The mechanics of trust: a framework for research and design

With an increasing number of technologies supporting transactions over distance and replacing traditional forms of interaction, designing for trust in mediated interactions has become a key concern for researchers in human computer interaction (HCI). While much of this research focuses on increasing users’ trust, we present a framework that shifts the perspective towards factors that support trustworthy behavior. In a second step, we analyze how the presence of these factors can be signalled. We argue that it is essential to take a systemic perspective for enabling well-placed trust and trustworthy behavior in the long term. For our analysis we draw on relevant research from sociology, economics, and psychology, as well as HCI. We identify contextual properties (motivation based on temporal, social, and institutional embeddedness) and the actor's intrinsic properties (ability, and motivation based on internalized norms and benevolence) that form the basis of trustworthy behavior. Our analysis provides a frame of reference for the design of studies on trust in technology-mediated interactions, as well as a guide for identifying trust requirements in design processes. We demonstrate the application of the framework in three scenarios: call centre interactions, B2C e-commerce, and voice-enabled on-line gaming

The nature of human altruism

Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness. Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world. However, there is much individual heterogeneity and the interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation. Depending on the environment, a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate or, conversely, a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect. Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene–culture co-evolution.altruism, selfishness, human altruism, evolution

Promoting Honesty in Negotiation: An Exercise in Practical Ethics

In a competitive and morally imperfect world, business people are often faced with serious ethical challenges. Harboring suspicions about the ethics of others, many feel justified in engaging in less-than-ideal conduct to protect their own interests. The most sophisticated moral arguments are unlikely to counteract this behavior. We believe that this morally defensive behavior is responsible, in large part, for much undesirable deception in negotiation. Drawing on recent work in the literature of negotiations, we present some practical guidance on how negotiators might build trust, establish common interests, and secure credibility for their statements thereby promoting honesty We also point out the types of social and institutional arrangements, many of which have become commonplace, that work to promote credibility, trust, and honesty in business dealings. Our approach is offered not only as a specific response to the problem of deception in negotiation, but as one model of how research in business ethics might offer constructive advice to practitioners.Credibility; Business Ethics; Negotiations; Institutions

ECONOMIC COOPERATION IN TURKISH CULTURE: PUBLIC GOODS GAMES AND LONELY ELEPHANTS

While the public good experiment has been used to analyze cooperation among various groups in Western Europe and North America, it has not been extensively used in other contexts such as Turkey. This project seeks to rectify that and explore how Turkish university students informally self govern. By employing the public good experiment among a cohort of students attending universities in Ýzmir, Turkey and Adýyaman, Turkey, we hope to quantitatively analyze the factors which lead to altruistic punishment, to antisocial punishment, and ultimately to enhanced cooperation in Turkish society.Cooperation, Free Riding, Altruism, Punishment, Trust, Experimental Economics, Public Good Experiments

Does virtuous circle between social capital and CSR exist? A “network of games” model and some empirical evidence

Social capital and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have received increasing attention in research on the role that elements such as trust, trustworthiness and social norms of reciprocity and cooperation may have in promoting socio-economic development. Although social capital and CSR seem to have features in common, their relationship has not yet been analysed in depth. This paper investigates the idea of a virtuous circle between the level of social capital and the implementation of CSR practices that fosters the creation of cooperative networks between the firm and all its stakeholders. By using both a theoretical approach developed by considering tools of network analysis and psychological game theory and an empirical approach based on original evidence from three case studies, this study shows the role that cognitive social capital (understood as a disposition to conform with ethical principles of cooperation) and the adoption of CSR practices may have in promoting the emergence of sustainable networks of relations between the firm and all its stakeholders (structural social capital).Social capital, Corporate Social Responsibility, Social norms, Network, Cooperation, Trust

Evolution and Culture

The goal of cross-cultural psychology to identify and explain similarities and differences in the behavior of individuals in different cultures requires linking human behavior to its context (Cole, Meshcheryakov & Ponomariov, 2011). In order to specify this relation, the focus is usually on the sociocultural environment and how it interacts with behavior. Since cross-cultural psychology also deals with the evolutionary and biological bases of behavior, this focus on culture has regularly led to an unbalanced view (Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis & Sam, 2011). Too often, biology and culture are seen as opposites: what is labeled as cultural is not biological and what is labeled as biological is not cultural (Chasiotis, 2010, 2011a). This article will first introduce the central concepts of natural and sexual selection, adaptation, and the epigenetic (open) genetic processes in evolutionary biology, and indicate their psychological implications. It will then argue that biology and culture are intricately related. Finally, empirical evidence from diverse psychological research areas will be presented to illustrate why the study of the evolutionary basis is as essential as the analysis of the sociocultural context for the understanding of behavior. Due to space restrictions, cultural transmission will be the only research area which is addressed in more detail (more examples of evolutionary approaches in intelligence, personality, and behavior genetics and their implications for cross-cultural research can be found on the website accompanying Berry et al., 2011; see also further readings section)

“Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life

Carrot or Stick? Group Selection and the Evolution of Reciprocal Preferences

This paper studies the evolution of both characteristics of reciprocity - the willingness to reward friendly behavior and the willingness to punish hostile behavior. Firstly, preferences for rewarding as well as preferences for punishing can survive evolution provided individuals interact within separated groups. This holds even with randomly formed groups and even when individual preferences are unobservable. Secondly, preferences for rewarding survive only in coexistence with self-interested preferences. But preferences for punishing tend either to vanish or to dominate the population entirely. Finally, the evolution of preferences for rewarding and the evolution of preferences for punishing influence each other decisively. The existence of rewarders enhances the evolutionary success of punishers, but punishers crowd out rewarders

Measuring Indirect Reciprocity: Whose Back Do We Scratch?

This paper presents an experimental investigation of strong indirect reciprocity. We examine both generalized indirect reciprocity (if A helps B then B helps C) and social indirect reciprocity (if A helps B then C helps A), in a setting where reciprocal behavior cannot be explained by strategic motivations. We also consider a treatment for direct reciprocity, as a benchmark, and use a variant of the strategy method to control for di®erences in ¯rst movers' actions across treatments. We ¯nd evidence of strong reciprocity within each treatment, both for strategies and decisions. Generalized indirect reciprocity is found to be signi¯cantly stronger than social indirect reciprocity and, interestingly, direct reciprocity. This ¯nd- ing is interpreted as re°ecting the relevance of ¯rst movers' motivation for second movers' reciprocal behavior.Reciprocity, Experimental Economics.

State Reputation as a Public Good

A state’s concern for its reputation is widely considered the most powerful mechanism for inducing rational egoist states to comply with costly commitments. A state with a diversity of interests will accept costs on organised groups in the expectation of future benefits derived from a reputation for meeting its international commitments. Although the scope of the effectiveness of this argument has been qualified by subsequent scholarship, reputational incentives remain a central causal mechanism in institutionalist approaches to international relations. This paper introduces a new, more fundamental criticism: a state’s reputation for complying with international obligations is a public good so far as diverse politically influential domestic constituents are concerned: each constituent has an incentive not to accept costs towards the maintenance of a states’ overall reputation for fulfilling its obligations. We should therefore expect that states will not, in general, fulfil costly obligations out of respect for their reputation, unless gains from reputation can be reliably internalised in the form of private goods or where domestic politics provides reliable solutions to the relevant domestic collective action problems.