The Impact of Sex, Value Orientations and Risk Attitudes on Trust and Reciprocity
Scholarly Editions
Overview
Research
Identity
View All
Overview
abstract
Prior experimental studies provide evidence that the levels of trust and reciprocity are
highly susceptible to individuals’ preferences towards payoffs, prior experience, capacity to learn
more about personal characteristics of each other and social distance. The objective of this study is
to examine whether social value orientation as developed by Griesinger and Livingstone (1973) and
Liebrand (1984) and risk preferences can help to account for the variability of trust and
trustworthiness. We use the Berg et al. (1995) investment game to generate indices of trust and
reciprocity. Prior to their participation in the investment game, all subjects participated in two
other games. One is used to measure their social value orientation (a measure of other regarding
behavior) and the second to measure risk attitudes. These variables are introduced as treatments
in the analysis of the trust and reciprocity data. In addition to these preference related variables,
gender is introduced to capture any differences between men and women which may not be encompassed by
value orientation and risk attitudes. The statistical analysis indicates that the social value orientation
measure significantly accounts for variation in trust and reciprocity. As well, the level of trust
exhibited by an investor significantly affects the reciprocity of the responders and this measure of
trust interacts with social value orientation. Individuals who are highly pro-social reciprocate more as
the sender’s trust increases, while those who are highly pro-self reciprocate less as the sender’s trust
increases. For this sample of participants, the gender variable does not capture any differences in the
behavior of men and women that is not already reflected by the differences captured by their value orientations.
Risk attitudes do not significantly account for variation in trusting behavior, except for the case where
individuals have neither strongly pro-social nor pro-self social value orientations. In this case, more
riskseeking individuals are more trusting.
