In this experiment, we paired two people and assigned them the roles of player 1 and player 2. We gave player 1 $10 and asked her to chose how much money to give to player 2. We also told both players that each dollar sent to player 2 would be tripled. For example, if player 1 gave away all $10, then player 2 would receive $30. Player 2 was then asked to choose how much money to send back to player 1 (but this time it was not tripled). So if player 2 received $30 and wanted to split it fifty-fifty, then he could send back $15 to player 1 and keep $15 for himself. Player 1 would earn an extra $5 as a result.
This game is called the trust game because the first player's decision indicates how much she trusts the second player to return some of the money she is giving away. By the same token, the second player's decision indicates how "trustworthy" he is.
That's from Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler's Connected. Frustratingly, they don't say what typically happens when this game is played. They do say, however, on the basis of studies with twins, that "genes significantly influenced both trust and trustworthy behavior" and "what this means is that cooperation, altruism, punishment, and free-riding are written into our DNA".
I did some Googling and found the results of a double-blind trust game:
On average, player 1 sent over $5 and roughly one third of the time player 2 reciprocated by sending back more than was originally sent even though the double-blind condition implied no one would know what player 2 really did.
I think it would be absolutely fascinating to see what happens if you played this game at work or with friends or family... but then again, I'm geeky like that.
