Influence of social distance and promise levels on trust decisions: An ERPs study

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2023.01859

Abstract

Abstract:

Previous research has revealed that trust plays an important role in promoting functioning, economic growth, and individual well-being in human society. Trust refers to individuals’ willingness to take risks to hand over their resources to others in the context of social uncertainty. Based on rational signal theory, individuals tend to make social decisions (e.g., trust) according to perceived social information of others, such as social identity, gestures, language, and behaviors. Among these, trustees’ social identity and their promises are important social information that convey whether an individual is trustworthy and reliable. Previous research has only examined the effect of promise levels on trust decisions, or the effect social distance on trust decisions. However, little is known about how promise levels and social distance interact to affect trust behaviors and its neural mechanisms.

We adapted a Trust Game (TG) and the event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the neurocognitive mechanisms of the effect of promise levels and social distance on trust behaviors. In particular, participates were asked to choose whether to trust their friends and strangers when they made high and low-level promises while electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded. Within each round, participants were informed of the promisor and their promise. We adopted two promise levels from previous studies: high-level promises would return 28 yuan (70%), and low-level 12 yuan (30%). The social distance includes both friend and stranger levels. The experiment consisted of 600 trials, including 150 trials for each condition.

These results suggest that motivations of trust behaviors toward friends and strangers are driven by different psychological mechanisms. Individuals trust friends more, and when the promisor is a friend, individuals can be motivated by the mutual interests of self and friends when making trust choices. However, when the promisor is a stranger, individuals are only driven by self-interest, and they do not care about strangers’ benefits when making trust choices. The present study provides insight into how the brain processes the interplay of social distance and promise levels on trust decisions, which broadens the previous insight into understanding trust behaviors.

Key words: promise levels, social distance, trust behavior, rational signal theory, event-related potentials (ERPs)

LI Mei, LI Jin, ZHANG Guanfei, ZHONG Yiping, LI Hong. (2023). Influence of social distance and promise levels on trust decisions: An ERPs study. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 55(11), 1859-1871.

Figures/Tables 5

Table 1 Range and mean of the number of trusting trials in each condition for the 38 participants

Conditions	Range of trusting trials	Mean of the number of trusting trials (M ± SD)
Low-level promise_ friends	44~149	118.74 ± 29.45
High-level promise_ friends	42~150	117.08 ± 28.55
Low-level promise_ strangers	8~150	97.55 ± 38.53
High-level promise_ strangers	4~133	70.24 ± 35.96

Figure 1. A single trial of the trust game.

Figure 2. Rates of trust (A) and trusted perceptions (B) in each experimental condition.
Note. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

Figure 3. (A) Grand-average ERP waveforms at Fz and FCz. The grey bars highlight the time window of P2 (210 ~280 ms) and N2(290~ 350 ms); (B)Topographies voltage distribution of P2 and N2 for each condition; (C) The bar graphs of mean P2 and N2 values for each condition.
Note. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Figure 4. (A) Grand-average ERP waveforms at CPz. The grey bars highlight the time window of P3 (350 ~ 450 ms); (B)Topographies voltage distribution of P3 for each condition; (C) The bar graphs of mean P3 values for each condition.
Note. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

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