What’s in a frame? Goal framing, trust and reciprocity

Ananish Chaudhuri (), Yaxiong Li and Tirnud Paichayontvijit

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2016, vol. 57, issue C, 117-135

Abstract: Economists often rely on the Berg et al. (1995) trust game, or variants thereof, to identify levels of trust and reciprocity, which are fundamental to discussions of social capital. But to what extent is behavior in this game sensitive to the way the instructions are framed? We use the Berg et al. trust game played for ten rounds with random re-matching to study this. We implement a number of variations in the way the game is presented to subjects. We show that levels of trust, reciprocity and returns to trust are significantly higher under “goal framing”, which highlights the conflict inherent in the game, between self-interest and maximizing social surplus. Furthermore, with such framing, trust measured via the experimental game exhibits significant positive correlation with trust measured via the Social Values Orientation questionnaire.

Keywords: Trust; Reciprocity; Experiments; Context; Social value orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:57:y:2016:i:c:p:117-135

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2016.09.005

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