Trust, Values and False Consensus

Jeffrey Butler, Paola Giuliano and Luigi Guiso

No 6916, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Trust beliefs are heterogeneous across individuals and, at the same time, persistent across generations. We investigate one mechanism yielding these dual patterns: false consensus. In the context of a trust game experiment, we show that individuals extrapolate from their own type when forming trust beliefs about the same pool of potential partners – i.e., more (less) trustworthy individuals form more optimistic (pessimistic) trust beliefs - and that this tendency continues to color trust beliefs after several rounds of game-play. Moreover, we show that one's own type/trustworthiness can be traced back to the values parents transmit to their children during their upbringing. In a second closely-related experiment, we show the economic impact of mis-calibrated trust beliefs stemming from false consensus. Mis-calibrated beliefs lower participants' experimental trust game earnings by about 20 percent on average.

Keywords: culture; trustworthiness; trust; false consensus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 A12 D1 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-hpe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published in: International Economic Review, 2015, 56 (3), 889-915

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6916.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: TRUST, VALUES, AND FALSE CONSENSUS (2015)
Working Paper: Trust, Values and False Consensus (2012)
Working Paper: Trust, Values and False Consensus (2012)
Working Paper: Trust, Values and False Consensus (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6916

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().