| This dissertation examines several aspects of social preferences using laboratory experiments. Chapter one and two investigate the relationship between trust and trustworthiness. These experiments, conducted with college students in Vietnam, test the hypotheses that the trust characteristics of an individual or a group environment may have behavioral externalities and impact the economic behavior of people transacting with that individual or that of people operating in that group. The main results from the experiment in chapter one show that a high trust individual is more likely to be trusted because his having high trust for other people induces a higher expectation of his trustworthiness and also greater altruism towards him. The experiment in chapter two provides evidence that the trust environment in a group has positive impact on the trustworthiness of its members following the members' integration into the group. However, the effect of the group's trust environment on trustworthiness is negative for members who newly enter. The results in these two chapters provide positive evidence that beyond the immediate efficiency gain in the trust transaction, trust behavior has real impacts on individual economic behavior and could further translate into real economic efficiency.;Chapter three studies one channel for the transmission of social preferences across generations, which is the teaching of social preferences by parents to their children. In the experiment conducted on Vietnamese parents and their children between 10 and 15 years old, parents behave more altruistically, cooperatively and honestly when their choices are presented to their own children, compared to the other conditions when choices are kept secret or presented to other adults or children chosen at random. This increase in prosocial inclination of parents is not due to the presence of an observer, nor to the observer's child status, rather it originates from the parents' willingness to teach their children social preferences. The finding from this experiment provides insight to the social influences that affect the course of social preference development of an individual. |
