Abstract:

Widely regarded as a paradoxical phenomenon, trust refers to one’s willingness to place one’s resources at the disposal of another party, sometimes without adequate information for judging the other person’s motives, intentions, and actions. As a fundamental social signaling mechanism, trust plays an important role in the development and maintenance of well-functioning relationships. Using the Trust Game, researchers have explored cognitive neural mechanisms of interpersonal trust and have proposed four theories including the betrayal aversion theory, social norm theory, moral norm theory, and the default behavior model. Neuroimaging studies have indicated certain brain regions to be differentially associated with the decision to trust, including medial prefrontal cortex, caudate nucleus, amygdala, and insula. Future research should emphasize the integration of different theories under the framework of multi-level analysis, pursue functional connectivity analysis of brain regions, and take individual difference factors into consideration.

Key words: economic decision-making, trust game, theoretical model, neural mechanisms