What does the Trust Game say about Trust ?

Abstract : Since its publication in 1995 by Berg, Dickhaut and McCabe, the Trust Game has become the standard approach for investigating trust through experimental means in economics (but also in psychology). Has the Trust Game been able to deliver a consistent economic approach to trust? This paper shows that, as of today, the answer is no for two varied reasons. Firstly, through a quantitative network analysis, we show that the use of the Trust Game nourishes at least two quite distinct economic approaches to trust. Secondly, we conduct a methodological analysis of existing examinations of the validity of the results from this game to show that the validity criteria used so far are too narrow to suggest improvements that could deliver a consistent economic approach to trust based on the trust game.

On this page, you will find the complete outcomes of the quantitative analysis.