Trust Responsiveness and Beliefs

Guerra, Gerardo A.; Zizzo, Daniel John

doi:10.2139/ssrn.374000

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Trust Responsiveness and Beliefs

U of Oxford, Economics Discussion Paper No. 99

33 Pages Posted: 15 Apr 2003

See all articles by Gerardo A. Guerra

Gerardo A. Guerra

University of Oxford - Department of Economics

Daniel John Zizzo

University of Queensland - School of Economics

Date Written: April 2002

Abstract

Trust responsiveness is the tendency to fulfill trust because you believe that it has been placed on you. The experiment presented in this paper uses two simple trust games to measure directly or indirectly the robustness of trust responsiveness in three conditions: When beliefs are elicited and a summary of these beliefs is transmitted; when beliefs are elicited but not transmitted; when beliefs are not elicited. Insofar as we can tell, trust responsiveness is robust to our belief manipulations: this strengthens the case for the real-world significance of trust responsiveness. Shame provides a possible explanation for unexpected trusters' choices.

Keywords: Trust, Trust responsiveness, Belief elicitation, Shame

JEL Classification: C72, C91, Z13

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Guerra, Gerardo A. and Zizzo, Daniel John, Trust Responsiveness and Beliefs (April 2002). U of Oxford, Economics Discussion Paper No. 99, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=374000 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.374000