| Summary: | Rational trust
decisions depend on potential outcomes and expectations of reciprocity. In the
trust game, outcomes and expectations correspond to the structural factors of
risk and temptation. Two experiments investigated how risk and temptation
influenced information search and final decisions in the trust game. The
central finding was that trustors underemphasized temptation relative to its
effects on the expected value of trust. Instead, trustors made decisions
egocentrically, focusing on potential outcomes. In Experiment 1, information
search data revealed that trustors often made decisions without learning about
the payoffs related to temptation. Experiment 2 investigated whether trustors
were able to use temptation to form accurate expectations of reciprocity.
Trustors understood, but underestimated, the relationship between temptation
and the probability of reciprocity. Moreover, they did not fully consider
expectations in their final trust decisions. Changes in potential outcomes had
larger effects on trust than comparable changes in expectations. These results
suggest that levels of trust are too high when the probability of reciprocity
is low and too low when that probability is high.
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