The Persistent Power of Promises

Florian Ederer and Frédéric Schneider

No 2129, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: This paper investigates how the passage of time affects trust, trustworthiness, and cooperation. We use a hybrid lab and online experiment to provide the first evidence for the persistent power of communication. Even when 3 weeks pass between messages and actual choices, communication raises cooperation, trust, and trustworthiness by about 50 percent. Lags between the beginning of the interaction and the time to respond do not substantially alter trust or trustworthiness. Our results further suggest that the findings of the large experimental literature on trust that focuses on laboratory scenarios in which subjects are forced to choose their actions immediately after communicating, may translate to more ecologically valid settings in which individuals choose actions outside the lab and long after they initially made promises.

Keywords: Trust; Promises; Persistence; Trustworthiness; Delay; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 C91 D03 D64 K12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-soc
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Working Paper: The Persistent Power of Promises (2019)
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