IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0127680.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of Cognitive Load on Trusting Behavior – An Experiment Using the Trust Game

Author

Listed:
  • Katarzyna Samson
  • Patrycjusz Kostyszyn

Abstract

Last decades have witnessed a progressing decline of social trust, which has been predominantly linked to worsening economic conditions and increasing social inequality. In the present research we propose a different type of explanation for the observed decline – cognitive load related to technological development and the accelerating pace of modern life. In an experimental study participants played the trust game while performing one of two different secondary tasks – listening to a disturbing noise or memorizing a sequence of characters – or with no additional task in the control condition. Results show that in both cognitive load conditions participants expressed significantly less trust in the trust game than in case of no cognitive load. Additionally, when cognitive resources were limited, participants’ behavior was more impulsive than when their resources were fully available.

Suggested Citation

  • Katarzyna Samson & Patrycjusz Kostyszyn, 2015. "Effects of Cognitive Load on Trusting Behavior – An Experiment Using the Trust Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-10, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0127680
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127680
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127680
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127680&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0127680?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    2. Johnson, Noel D. & Mislin, Alexandra A., 2011. "Trust games: A meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 865-889.
    3. Ashok Lalwani, 2009. "The Distinct Influence of Cognitive Busyness and Need for Closure on Cultural Differences in Socially Desirable Responding," Working Papers 0061, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio.
    4. Shiv, Baba & Fedorikhin, Alexander, 1999. "Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 26(3), pages 278-292, December.
    5. Ashok K. Lalwani, 2009. "The Distinct Influence of Cognitive Busyness and Need for Closure on Cultural Differences in Socially Desirable Responding," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(2), pages 305-316.
    6. Berg Joyce & Dickhaut John & McCabe Kevin, 1995. "Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 122-142, July.
    7. Duffy, Sean & Smith, John, 2014. "Cognitive load in the multi-player prisoner's dilemma game: Are there brains in games?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 47-56.
    8. Ondrej Rydval, 2012. "The Causal Effect of Cognitive Abilities on Economic Behavior: Evidence from a Forecasting Task with Varying Cognitive Load," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp457, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    9. Alesina, Alberto & La Ferrara, Eliana, 2002. "Who trusts others?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 207-234, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sean Duffy & J. J. Naddeo & David Owens & John Smith, 2024. "Cognitive Load and Mixed Strategies: On Brains and Minimax," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 26(03), pages 1-34, September.
    2. Jingyue Sun & Yanqun Huang & Xueqin Huang & Jian Zhang & Hechen Zhang, 2024. "Effect of Proactive Interaction on Trust in Autonomous Vehicles," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-16, April.
    3. Allred, Sarah & Duffy, Sean & Smith, John, 2016. "Cognitive load and strategic sophistication," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 162-178.
    4. Sarraf, Shagun & Kushwaha, Amit Kumar & Kar, Arpan Kumar & Dwivedi, Yogesh K. & Giannakis, Mihalis, 2024. "How did online misinformation impact stockouts in the e-commerce supply chain during COVID-19 – A mixed methods study," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    5. Naveh Eskinazi & Miki Malul & Mosi Rosenboim & Tal Shavit, 2023. "Do you still trust me? An experimental study on the effect of uncertainty, complexity and anchors in a trust game," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(2), pages 892-905, March.
    6. van den Akker, Olmo R. & van Assen, Marcel A.L.M. & van Vugt, Mark & Wicherts, Jelte M., 2020. "Sex differences in trust and trustworthiness: A meta-analysis of the trust game and the gift-exchange game," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    7. Adam Dominiak & Peter Duersch, 2024. "Choice under uncertainty and cognitive load," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 68(2), pages 133-161, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fijnanda van Klingeren, 2020. "Playing nice in the sandbox: On the role of heterogeneity, trust and cooperation in common-pool resources," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-36, August.
    2. Antoci, Angelo & Bonelli, Laura & Paglieri, Fabio & Reggiani, Tommaso & Sabatini, Fabio, 2019. "Civility and trust in social media," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 83-99.
    3. Martin G. Kocher, 2015. "How Trust in Social Dilemmas Evolves with Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 5447, CESifo.
    4. Bejarano, Hernán & Gillet, Joris & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2021. "Trust and trustworthiness after negative random shocks," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    5. Katarzyna Samson, 2018. "Trust as a mechanism of system justification," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-22, October.
    6. Ansink, Erik & Tesfaye, Abonesh & Bouma, Jetske & Brouwer, Roy, 2017. "Cooperation in watershed management: A field experiment on location, trust, and enforcement," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 91-104.
    7. Póvoa, Angela Cristiane Santos & Pech, Wesley & Woiciekovski, Edinéia, 2020. "Trust and social preferences: A cross-cultural experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    8. Alberto E. Chong & David A. Fleming & Hernán D. Bejarano, 2011. "Trust and Trustworthiness in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters: Experimental Evidence from the 2010 Chilean Earthquake," Working Papers 2011-15, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    9. Ekici, Tufan & Ergun, Selim Jürgen & Rivas, M. Fernanda, 2016. "Trust and reciprocity in Cyprus," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 36-49.
    10. Calabuig, Vicente & Fatas, Enrique & Olcina, Gonzalo & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2016. "Carry a big stick, or no stick at all," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 153-171.
    11. Schwieren, Christiane & Sutter, Matthias, 2008. "Trust in cooperation or ability? An experimental study on gender differences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 494-497, June.
    12. Rémi Suchon & Marie Claire Villeval, 2017. "Does upward mobility harm trust?," Post-Print halshs-01659021, HAL.
    13. Hernán Bejarano & Joris Gillet & Ismael Rodriguez‐Lara, 2018. "Do Negative Random Shocks Affect Trust and Trustworthiness?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(2), pages 563-579, October.
    14. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2014. "Trust, but verify? When trustworthiness is observable only through (costly) monitoring," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 20, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    15. Kugler, Tamar & Bornstein, Gary & Kocher, Martin G. & Sutter, Matthias, 2007. "Trust between individuals and groups: Groups are less trusting than individuals but just as trustworthy," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 646-657, December.
    16. Dhami, Sanjit & Wei, Mengxing & Mamidi, Pavan, 2024. "Religious identity, trust, reciprocity, and prosociality: Theory and evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    17. Zakaria Babutsidze & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2021. "Nonverbal content and trust: An experiment on digital communication," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(4), pages 1517-1532, October.
    18. Chikwalila, Eric & Willinger, Marc & Farolfi, Stefano & Mungatana, Eric & Jourdain, Damien, 2023. "The impact of a scholarship programme on social capital formation among university students: An economic experiment at the University of Pretoria, South Africa," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 18(01), April.
    19. Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Grimalda, Gianluca, 2016. "Groups and trust: Experimental evidence on the Olson and Putnam hypotheses," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 38-54.
    20. Sabatini, Fabio, 2006. "The Empirics of Social Capital and Economic Development: A Critical Perspective," Knowledge, Technology, Human Capital Working Papers 12097, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0127680. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.