Cross-cultural trust and resource sharing: The Role of Ideal Affect

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

Trust is the basis of social coordination and cooperation, and considered by many to be the very foundation of high-functioning societies. Indeed, people share more with people whom they trust, and societies with higher levels of trust have more efficient judicial systems, higher quality government bureaucracies, less corruption, and are more economically developed. How do people decide whom to trust, especially when they need to make these decisions quickly, with very little information? Remarkably, little is known about the cues that people use to judge trustworthiness and how these cues might vary across cultures, despite the fact that these cues may critically determine whether people become friend or foe. This is especially important now because people are in greater contact with others whose cultural ideas and practices differ from their own. In the proposed project, Tsai and colleagues test the hypothesis that people trust and share more resources with others whose emotional expressions match how people ideally want to feel (their ideal affect). They predict that cultural differences in whom people trust and share resources with are due to cultural differences in how people ideally want to feel. This prediction is tested in three behavioral and three fMRI experiments, as well as a longitudinal study. These findings will provide insights about interpersonal trust in different cultures. In previous work, we observed that members of North American cultures value excited states---excitement, enthusiasm, and elation---more, while members of East Asian cultures value calm states---calm, peacefulness, serenity---more. These cultural differences influenced whom people trusted and with whom they shared resources. European Americans trusted and gave more to people who showed excitement (vs. calm), whereas East Asians trusted and gave more to people who showed calm (vs. excitement). These findings demonstrate that people trust and give more to others whose emotional expressions match their ideal affect. This ideal affect match mattered even more than matches in race or sex, suggesting that emotional expressions may signal shared values even more than more static facial features. In the proposed project, we use a variety of experimental, cross-cultural, and neuroimaging methods to examine whether situational factors (i.e., having time to deliberate; being in a good vs. bad mood; knowing someone's reputation) increase or decrease people's use of emotional cues to decide whom to trust and share with. In addition, using a longitudinal design, we examine whether these processes influence the development of trust and friendship while people are adjusting to new cultures -- specifically, Chinese studying in the U.S., and Americans studying in China. Together, these studies will: (1) advance understanding of how people decide whom to trust and share resources; (2) promote cross-cultural communication and exchange; and (3) increase awareness about the unconscious cultural biases that may result in discrimination against particular groups (e.g., bicultural Asian Americans) in multicultural societies like the U.S.