The Cost of Appearing Suspicious? Information Gathering in Trust Decisions

Abstract

ABSTRACTTrust decisions are inherently uncertain, as people have incomplete information about the trustworthiness of the other prior to their decision. Therefore, it is beneficial to gather information about a trustee’s past behaviour before deciding whether or not to trust them. However, elaborate inquiries about a trustee’s behavior may change the trustee’s willingness to reciprocate, causing either a decrease due to the investor appearing suspicious, or an increase because the investor appears to be highly betrayal-averse. Such a change could cause the investor to gather less or more information, respectively. We examine how information acquisition is modulated by social context, monetary cost, and the trustee’s trustworthiness. Participants had the opportunity to sequentially sample information about a trustee’s reciprocation history before they decided whether or not to invest. On some trials, we induced a social context by telling the participant that the trustee would later learn how much the participant sampled (“overt sampling”). Participants sampled less when there was a monetary cost and when the reciprocation history was more conclusive. Crucially, when sampling was free and overt, participants sampled less, suggesting negative consequences of appearing suspicious. In post-experiment questionnaires, participants indeed reported a belief that the reciprocation probability would decrease when information was overtly sampled. The findings replicated in a second experiment and were well accounted for by a utility-maximizing model in which overt sampling induces a decrease in reciprocation probability. This study opens the door to broader applications of the tools and models of information sampling to social decision-making.Significance StatementTrust and reciprocity are essential for establishing and maintaining beneficial cooperative interactions. However, not everyone can be trusted. Here, we focus on a fundamental question in the study of social interaction: how people gather and use information to make a decision to trust or not trust. While more information seems better, participants gathered less information about trustworthiness when the trustee would learn about the inquiries, as if they avoided appearing suspicious. Indeed, participants reported that they believed that sampling elaborately would make the trustee less willing to reciprocate trust. Using a mathematical model of information gathering, we show that this belief indeed reduces the value of information. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of information gathering in social contexts.