Do you trust me?
Trust matters whether it’s love, money or another part of our everyday lives that requires risk, and a new study by a Dartmouth brain researcher and his collaborators sheds light on what motivates people to make that leap of faith.
In the new study, participants thought they were playing an economic investment game with a close friend, a stranger or a slot machine. In reality, they were playing with a simple algorithm that reciprocated trust 50 percent of the time. The researchers developed a computational model that predicted each player’s decision for each round given their previous experiences in the game.
Results showed that participants found positive interactions with a close friend more rewarding than interactions with a stranger or slot machine, and that the researchers’ “social value” model predicted participants’ investment decisions better than models that only considered financial payoffs. Neuroimaging also showed that specific brain signals – in the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex – correlated with social value signals when the participants made their decisions.
Paper:
http://cosanlab.com/static/papers/Farerietal2015JNeuro.pdf
#neuroscience #research #trust
Close encounters with those for whom this behaviour is inexplicably elusive are deeply unsettling.
ReplyDelete"Trust" is the modern world's equivalent of "gold". It's so elusive, that when it's found it's remarkable.
ReplyDeleteNope. I don't trust you one bit. Lol!!!
ReplyDeleteI reflect on myself in that people trust me with their lives when I take them out to sea. I'm a bit surprised if this for they don't know me. Just because I have a federal license to transport passengers and I wear a snazzy uniform, people trust me. I carry myself seriously and yet light hearted as I pilot the vessel. I've experienced that people tend to be more relaxed and trustworthy when I tell light jokes. Almost comedically. Which one would assume untrustworthy. I guess when people are having fun, caution goes out the door.
I think there is the balance between being very professional and a complete fool that instills trust in a person. But this idea fails with an animal. We trust dogs and cats but not alligators and spiders. Which brings in the fear of the unknown and knowledge of defenses. I've handled many spiders over the years. I even have three European Cross spiders outside in my garden which I placed them there with my bare hands and no fear that I would be bitten. Heck, I'll even handle a Brown Recluse or a Black Widow spider. I trust they won't bite me because I have knowledge of what provokes them to bite. Yet, I have never heard a spider, cat, or even a dog tell a funny joke.
So what really is trust? Is it something that is passed on genetically? Do other animals use trust? Why do we trust some machines and not others?