Do We Know Whom to Trust? A Review on Trustworthiness Detection Accuracy

Judgments about people’s trustworthiness are made frequently and have important real-life consequences. However, the accuracy of these judgments is debated. We therefore systematically reviewed the current evidence for accurate trustworthiness detection in the literature. The overall evidence for accuracy is rather mixed; although we find only limited evidence for accurate trustworthiness detection from neutral photographs, trustworthiness detection becomes more accurate when the rater and target interact, when the target presentation resembles face-to-face contact, and when the target presentations contain cues or signals about the target’s trustworthiness. We also find that the current literature lacks an overarching research agenda, which leads to a large heterogeneity in the extant studies’ operationalizations. We address some of these operationalizations and suggest the following guidelines for future research: Studies should engage in stronger theory building, experimentally test moderators, strengthen generalizability by recruiting large target pools, and use appropriate methods for the analysis of nonindependent data

Justice sensitivity and distributive decisions in experimental games

The concept of "justice sensitivity" has been introduced as a personality disposition by Schmitt, Neumann and Montada (1995) and is supposed to explain inter-individual differences in reactions to unfair situations. Justice sensitivity can be differentiated in three subdimensions: (1) Sensitivity with regard to experiencing injustice towards oneself (JS(Victim)), (2) sensitivity to observing that others are treated unfairly (JS(Observer)) and, (3) sensitivity to profiting from unfair events (JS(Perpetrator)). Using a sample of 190 university students the three dimensions of justice sensitivity were used to predict decisions in a number of game theoretical paradigms (dictator games, ultimatum games and a combination of these two games). The higher respondents scored on both JSObserver and JSPerpetrator, the more their decisions followed norms of equality. The contrary was true for JS(victim). The implications of these findings for future research using the concept of justice sensitivity are discussed. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd

Do people trust too much or too little?

Across two studies, we asked whether people trust too much or too little, relative to what an economic analysis would suggest. In the trust game paradigm, participants decided whether to hand money over to an anonymous individual who could either return more money back or keep all the money. Participants trusted too little, in that they grossly underestimated the proportion of their peers who would return money, prompting them to forgo profitable decisions to trust. However, participants also trusted too much. Given their high levels of cynicism and tolerance for risk, few should have handed money over, yet many still chose to trust. Possible explanations for this paradox of trusting "too little" yet "too much" are discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Betrayal aversion versus principled trustfulness-How to explain risk avoidance and risky choices in trust games

Are decisions in a trust game more or less sensitive to changes in risk than decisions in a purely financial, non-social decision-making task? Participants in a binary trust game (they could either keep $5 for sure or give it to a trustee with the chance of getting$10 back) were informed that their chance of interacting with a trustworthy person was either 46 percent or 80 percent and then were asked to decide whether to trust that other person. In addition, participants made a decision in a lottery (i.e., whether to gamble $5 to win$10) with the same probabilities. In the 46 percent condition, participants were significantly more willing to choose the risky option in the trust game than in the lottery. Overall, the difference in probability of receiving money back had a significantly higher impact on the lottery decision than on the decision to trust. Possible interpretations of the present study and its relation to previous findings are discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

How laypeople and experts misperceive the effect of economic growth

A series of four experiments were performed to examine the accuracy of estimations of economic growth by both experts and lay people, the factors that influence the accuracy of their estimations, and which procedures they use to make estimations. The results show that for actual growth rates higher than 1%, both groups clearly underestimated growth, and the underestimation was lower for experts than for laypeople. The estimations became slightly better when the task was presented in a financial investment scenario. Incentives had no effect on the accuracy of the estimations: however, a positive influence of the need for cognition was observed. Male participants provided more accurate estimations than female participants. The common use of different, and inappropriate solution procedures, accounted for the under-estimators. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Married and cohabiting parents' well-being: The effects of a cultural normative context across countries

Research of personal relationships has typically linked childbearing in cohabiting (compared to married) couples to decreased well-being. Using data from 24 European countries, we show that this effect is not universal; rather, it is restricted to countries with a strong social norm that proscribes childbearing in cohabiting unions. We examine two potential mechanisms of this effect; the personal norm (cohabiting parents are worse off because their status deviates from their own expectations) and social norm (cohabiting parents are worse off because they experience external social sanctions, such as social disapproval) mechanisms. Our results provide support for the social norm mechanism. First, the detrimental effect related to a country's social norm exists even for cohabiting parents who personally favor childbearing in cohabiting couples. Second, in countries with a strong norm against childbearing in cohabiting unions, cohabiting parents feel that they are less respected than married couples, which contributes to lower levels of life satisfaction

Why So Cynical?: Asymmetric Feedback Underlies Misguided Skepticism Regarding the Trustworthiness of Others

People tend to grossly underestimate the trustworthiness of other people. We tested whether this cynicism grows out of an asymmetry in the feedback people receive when they decide to trust others. When people trust others, they painfully learn when other people prove to be untrustworthy; however, when people refrain from trusting others, they fail to learn of instances when the other person would have honored their trust. Participants saw short videos of other people and had to decide whether to trust each person in an economic game. Participants overall underestimated the trustworthiness of the people they viewed, regardless of whether they were given financial incentives to provide accurate estimates. However, people who received symmetric feedback about the trustworthiness of others (i.e., who received feedback regardless of their own decision to trust) exhibited reduced cynicism relative to those who received no feedback or asymmetric feedback (i.e., who received feedback only after they trusted the other person)