Is trustworthiness written on the face?

Alexander Dilger (), Julia Müller () and Michael Müller

No 2/2017, Discussion Papers of the Institute for Organisational Economics from University of Münster, Institute for Organisational Economics

Abstract: Trust is an important driver of economic transactions, but how do people decide whom to trust? We conduct an experiment to investigate whether people are able to predict trustworthiness by judging the face of a stranger. The behavior of the second player in the Trust Game is used as a measure of trustworthiness. Other subjects assess the trustworthiness of the second players of the Trust Game in the second stage using standardized photos of their faces. We find no significant interrelation in our statistical estimations between trustworthiness ratings and the behavior of the examined players. Surprisingly, players that were rated as more attractive sent back significantly less in the Trust Game.

JEL-codes: C72 C91 D03 D81 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:umiodp:22017

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