The Traits One Can Trust: Dissecting Reciprocity and Kindness as Determinants of Trustworthy Behavior

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
Isabel Thielmann, Benjamin E Hilbig

Abstract

Trustworthiness is a vital pillar of various social interactions hinging upon trust. However, the underlying determinants of trustworthiness-especially in terms of (basic) personality traits-are insufficiently understood. Specifically, three mechanisms underlying trustworthiness have been proposed: unconditional kindness, positive reciprocity, and negative reciprocity. The present research aims to disentangle these mechanisms using a trait-based approach, relying on the HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience) model of personality. In three studies, participants acted as the trustee in the trust game. All studies revealed consistent support for the unconditional kindness mechanism, showing an exclusive link between Honesty-Humility and trustworthiness, irrespective of the level of prior trust. In turn, positive and negative reciprocity could not account for the pattern of results. In addition, our results reconcile the inconsistent evidence on the relation between Big Five-Agreeableness and trustworthiness: Unconditional kindness only refers to one component of the broad Big Five-Agreeableness factor (which subsumes various cooperative tendencies).

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Citations

Aug 26, 2016·Journal of Medical Ethics·Toby HandfieldRobert Mark Simpson
Oct 26, 2018·Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience·Gabriele BellucciFrank Krueger
Apr 24, 2020·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Ingo ZettlerMorten Moshagen
Dec 15, 2016·Frontiers in Psychology·Manuel I IbáñezNikolaos Georgantzís
Sep 3, 2019·Frontiers in Human Neuroscience·Dominic S Fareri
Nov 16, 2019·Nature Communications·Gabriele BellucciSoyoung Q Park
Dec 14, 2019·American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education·Adam M PerskyJacqueline E McLaughlin
Jun 12, 2019·Journal of Personality Assessment·Isabel ThielmannKibeom Lee
Nov 19, 2020·Royal Society Open Science·Karolina A ŚcigałaIngo Zettler
Oct 11, 2021·Neuroscience Bulletin·Wei WangYiwen Wang

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Software Mentioned

AG
Power
HEX
HEXACO
HH
Mplus
FFM

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