Seeing Is Believing:the Effect Of Initial Trustworthiness And Follow-up Performance On Interpersonal Trust

Trust is the state of mind and corresponding behavior, depending on specific situations and based on the expectation to the intentions and actions of the others. The trust game (TG) is a frequently-used paradigm in the field of trust research. In TG, the amount of investment from investor to trustee is the quantitative measurement of investor’s trust to trustee. And the investor’s trust to trustee is influenced by the factors in following four aspects, which are the trustee, the investor, the interaction between them, and the rules and requirements of TG.This study aimed to research the following impact factors of trust, which belonging to the trustee, in the one-way (participant-as-investor only) and multiround-format TG by three experiments. The factors were (1) the face trustworthiness of the trustee and (2) the comments on the trustworthiness of the trustee in daily life and the previous TG in Experiment1; the trustee’s way of trust reciprocity in Experiment2;(1) the initial trustworthiness of the trustee and (2) the trustee’s way of trust reciprocity in Experiment3. And the results of the study showed that:First, on the interpersonal trust to the trustee, there were both (1) a significant main effect of the face trustworthiness of the trustee and (2) a significant main effect of the comments on the previous trustworthiness of the trustee. And there was a significant interaction between (1) the face trustworthiness of the trustee and (2) the comments on the previous trustworthiness of the trustee;Second, there was a significant main effect of the basic return rate, measured by the percentage of the base returnable amount on the first round in the total earning produced by the initial investment from the investor on the first round, on the interpersonal trust to the trustee;Third, on the interpersonal trust to the trustee, there were both (1) a significant main effect of information about the initial trustworthiness of the trustee, such as the face trustworthiness of the trustee and the comments on the trustee’s previous trustworthiness, and (2) a significant main effect of the trustee’s way of trust reciprocity, like the basic return rate. And there was a significant interaction on the interpersonal trust to the trustee between the trustee’s way of trust reciprocity and the initial trustworthiness of the trustee.