Is trust for sale? The effectiveness of financial compensation for repairing competence-versus integrity-based trust violations

Despite the popularity of financial compensation as a means for addressing trust violations, the question whether (more) money can indeed buy trust back remains largely unexplored. In the present research, we focus on the role of violation type and compensation size. The results of a scenario study and a laboratory experiment show that financial compensation can effectively promote the restoration of trust for transgressions that indicate a lack of competence. Conversely, for transgressions which signal a lack of integrity, financial compensation is not an effective tool to repair trust. Moreover, our findings indicate that for both violation types, overcompensation has no positive effects on top of the impact of equal compensation. These findings therefore show that when it comes to trust, money cannot buy everything

More Money, More Trust? Target and Observer Differences in the Effectiveness of Financial Overcompensation to Restore Trust.

Recent research revealed that despite its financial costs, overcompensation is not more effective to restore trust in the perpetrator than equal compensation. In a lab experiment (N = 115), we compared the effects of these compensation sizes for both targets of the compensation and noninvolved observers. It was revealed that overcompensation did not yield superior outcomes than equal compensation. Specifically, for targets overcompensation resulted in lower levels of trust than equal compensation, while for observers equal compensation and overcompensation resulted in similar levels of trust. This finding suggests that overcompensation is not a cost-effective trust repair strategy, neither for the targets nor for third party observers. Other implications are discussed as well

The underlying motives of different mixed-motive games

Haesevoets, Reinders Folmer, and Van Hiel (2015) have shown limited consistency of people’s behaviour across various mixed-motive games. According to these authors, the modest relationships among these games call into question the general idea that all mixedmotive games render the conflict between selfish interests and concern for others equally salient. Thielmann, Böhm, and Hilbig (2015), however, argued that these findings can be explained in terms of the motivational differences that underlie the games. In this article, we demonstrate that Thielmann et al.’s descriptive model of the different motives underlying selfish and prosocial choices cannot be straightforwardly applied to the empirical data at hand. Analogous to our previous article, we again stress the need for further empirical research investigating the underlying motivational basis of each mixed-motive game. Keywords: mixed-motive games, motivational basis, selfish choice, prosocial choic

Cooperation in mixed-motive games: the role of individual differences in selfish and social orientation

In mixed-motive games, people must choose between acting upon selfish interests and concerns for others. Yet, the consistency of people’s behavior across these various games is still unclear. If the same conflict between self and others is at the core of all mixed-motive situations, three hypotheses can be stated: (1) behaviors in different mixed-motive games should be substantially related, (2) all these games should substantially appeal to dispositional variables th

Behavioural Consistency Within the Prisoner's Dilemma Game

Mixed-motive games represent situations that confront people with a conflict between cooperative and non-cooperative alternatives. Despite this common basis, recent research has shown that the consistency of people's choices across different mixed-motive games is rather low. The present research examined behavioural consistency within the same mixed-motive game, by presenting participants with a series of one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma Games. Across this set of games, payoffs were manipulated in order to intensify or weaken the conflict between self and the other party while maintaining the game's underlying structure. Our findings indicate that significant differences in choice behaviour are observed as a function of both situational (i.e. manipulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game's payoff structure) and personality differences (i.e. individual differences in personality and motivational traits). Moreover, our included situational variables and personality features did not interact with each other and were about equally impactful in shaping cooperation. Crucially, however, despite the significant behavioural differences across game variants, considerable consistency in choices was found as well, which suggests that the game's motivational basis reliably impacts choice behaviour in spite of situational and personality variations. We discuss implications for theorizing on mixed-motive situations and elaborate on the question how cooperation can be promoted