How do we choose who to trust most?
Did you attend public school and work to put yourself through university? Did you go to private school and take a holiday in Saint Tropez? When deciding who to trust, do modest beginnings and upbringings win over privileged ones? According to a study led by the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, we’re likely to show more trust in people who grew up with less. This may come as no surprise given how much the public loves rags-to-riches stories. The findings were published in the ‘Journal of Personality and Social Psychology’(opens in new window).
Trust issues
“Trust is essential for healthy relationships. Without it, romantic partnerships can fail, workplaces can suffer and social divisions can grow,” commented UBC psychology professor and lead researcher Kristin Laurin in a press release(opens in new window). “But what makes people trust someone in the first place?” The researchers conducted several experiments involving over 1 900 volunteers to examine the degree to which their past and present social class affected how much others trusted them. One such experiment was a game against fictional players (trustees) whose financial backgrounds greatly differed growing up. The real participants (trusters) were given 10 raffle tickets for a drawing for two $ 100 (€ 63) gift cards. They could transfer raffle tickets to one of the trustees and were told any tickets transferred to a trustee would then be tripled. The trustee could return as many or as few tickets to the truster. To find out how much trusters believed their trust would be repaid, they had to answer the following question: “If you gave all 10 tickets to this person, they would have 30. How many do you think they would give back?” Results showed that trusters transferred more tickets to trustees with a lower-income status, irrespective of whether it was in the past or currently. They also anticipated that the trustees with lower-income backgrounds to return more tickets.
When less is more
“Our research shows that people draw a clear line between someone’s childhood and their current situation,” Laurin explained. “They generally saw people who grew up in lower-class homes as more moral and trustworthy. While they sometimes acted as if they trusted people who are currently lower class, they didn’t always believe those people would honor that trust.” The study suggests that how people present themselves in situations that require trust could be key. “If you’ve always been wealthy, for example, you might want to downplay that history and focus on the now, whereas if you’ve always struggled financially, making it clear that you grew up with humble roots might be more to your advantage,” she added. Laurin stressed that the research focused on the expectation of trust, and not if people who grew up in lower-class homes are really more trustworthy. “We didn’t examine whether a person’s childhood or current class background actually influences their behavior. That’s a question for future studies—especially to understand when trust is misplaced or when people miss chances to trust others fairly.”