Do you still trust me? An experimental study on the effect of uncertainty, complexity and anchors in a trust game

Abstract

Abstract The current study tests experimentally whether people's propensity to trust is biased by uncertainty, complexity, and the presence of numerical anchors in their personal monetary funds. Two hundred and fifty-eight undergraduate Israeli students were randomly assigned to five groups that differed by the type of endowment they received. Participants were asked to indicate how much money they wanted to send to their counterpart, allocated from an endowment with an amount of money that was certain or derived from a more complex lottery whose outcomes were varying, and hence, uncertain. The results indicate that trust is strongly affected by the presence of low numerical anchors but not by the uncertainty and complexity of the endowment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the effect of uncertainty, complexity, and the presence of numerical anchors together on the trustor's behavior in the Trust Game.