Yiming Jing

Sources for Trusting Most People How National Goals for Socializing Children Promote the Contributions Made by Trust of the In-Group and the Out-Group to Non-Specific Trust

We proposed a model suggesting how national goals for socializing children moderate the contributions made by the individual’s level of in- and out-group trust to his or her level of trust in most people, namely, non-specific trust. Consistent with our hypotheses, a two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis of representative data across 49 countries from the World Values Survey indicates that the individual’s level of trust in people known personally is a predictor of non-specific trust for persons of all national groups but a stronger predictor in countries emphasizing socialization for Self-directedness as opposed to Other-directedness. The individual’s trust in out-groups is likewise a predictor of non-specific trust for all national groups but a stronger predictor in countries emphasizing socialization for Self-directedness as well as for Civility as opposed to Practicality. Although trust in the family is not a significant predictor of non-specific trust across all national groups, it predicts non-specific trust in those countries characterized by socialization for Self-directedness. Our findings have important implications for the impact of variation in socialization practices for human capital formation and associated management practices across national cultures.

How dispositional social risk-seeking promotes trusting strangers: Evidence based on brain potentials and neural oscillations.

Trust is a risky social decision because betrayal may occur. It’s not clear how individual differences in social risk-seeking propensity modulate brain processes of trusting strangers. We examined event-related potentials and time-frequency power to investigate this question while 40 participants played the one-shot trust game. Twenty high social risk-seekers (HSR) and 20 low social risk-seekers (LSR) made trusting or distrusting decisions regarding unknown trustees while their electroencephalogram activity was recorded. At the decision-making stage, HSR participants exhibited a larger N2 and increased &bgr; power following distrusting decisions than trusting decisions, suggesting greater cognitive control exerted to distrust. By contrast, no such N2 and &bgr; differences were found for LSR participants. At the outcome evaluation stage, LSR participants exhibited a more negative-going difference wave between loss feedback-related negativity (FRN) and gain FRN (dFRN) and increased &thgr; power (following losses compared to gains) than did HSR participants, indicating enhanced risk sensitivity of LSR people. Our findings provide insights into the mechanism by which social risk-taking facilitates trusting strangers. The results also shed light on the temporal course of brain activity involved in trust decision-making and outcome evaluation, as well as how individual differences modulate brain dynamics of trusting strangers.

War or Peace? How the Subjective Perception of Great Power Interdependence Shapes Preemptive Defensive Aggression

Why do great powers with benign intentions end up fighting each other in wars they do not seek? We utilize an incentivized, two-person “Preemptive Strike Game” (PSG) to explore how the subjective perception of great power interdependence shapes defensive aggression against persons from rival great powers. In Study 1, college students from the United States (N = 115), China (N = 106), and Japan (N = 99) made PSG decisions facing each other. This natural experiment revealed that Chinese and Japanese participants (a) made more preemptive attacks against each other and Americans than against their compatriots, and that (b) greater preexisting perceptions of bilateral competition increased intergroup attack rates. In Study 2, adult Americans (N = 127) watched real CNN expert interviews portraying United States–China economic interdependence as more positive or negative. This randomized experiment revealed that the more positive portrayal reduced preemptive American strikes against Chinese (but not Japanese), while the more negative portrayal amplified American anger about China’s rise, increasing preemptive attacks against Chinese. We also found, however, that preemptive strikes were primarily defensive and not offensive. Interventions to reduce defensive aggression and promote great power peace are discussed.