Coleman's Hypothesis on trusting behaviour and a remark on meta-studiesFriedel Bolle and Jessica Kaehler Journal of Economic Methodology, 2006, vol. 13, issue 4, 469-483 Abstract: Coleman (1990) describes 'calculative trust'. He states that, in order to trust, the value of trust has to be larger than the value of mistrust. So if subjects have (not personally but on average) rational expectations about the trustworthiness of their transaction partners, we should expect the frequency of trust to increase with the average net profitability of trust. In a meta-study of trust experiments, Coleman's Hypothesis could not be confirmed while, in our own experiment with a wider parameter range, it is supported. We explain this finding by the parameter choices of experimenters. They choose pay-off parameters resulting in situations where decisions are 'difficult', i.e. to make the alternatives 'trusting' and 'non-trusting' seem equally profitable. Thus, such experiments are concentrated on a specific subspace of parameters and are inadequate for certain meta-studies. Keywords: trust; reciprocity; experimental economics; meta-studies; representative design; experimenter bias (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:13:y:2006:i:4:p:469-483 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/13501780601049061 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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