The Influence Of Individual Trust Level On Altruistic Behavior

In social interaction, besides satisfy their own interests, the individual often make all sorts of altruistic behavior, such as donating money to others, bearing pain for others, etc. As a kind of behavior appreciated by society, altruistic behavior has important significance to human survival and development, thus altruistic behavior has always been an important topic in psychological research. Psychologists have identified many factor of altruistic behavior, such as the rule of mutual benefit, the in-group favoritism, empathy and so on. But when there are more and more behaviors of "diving", "racketeer son", "help or not" is becoming a social problem, we also need to think about whether trust is another important factor to influence individual altruistic behavior,In the review of previous research, we can find questionnaire surveys or related researches conducted on this issue, which indicate that trust may affect altruistic behavior, In the neural mechanism research of trust and altruistic behavior, researchers found the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and other brain regions all play an important role in these behaviors, which suggesting the close link between trust and altruism. On the basis of these studies, this research adopts the way of experiment to explore the influence of the individual trust level to altruistic behavior.Individual trust includes two forms:the state of trust and trust behavior. This research adopts the self-evaluation to measure the state of trust, and uses the investment in the "trust game" to represent the trust behavior level. Life altruistic behavior have different types:economic losses (Type A) altruistic behavior and suffering physical pain (Type B) altruistic behavior. In this research there are two kinds "dictator games": in "dictator game A" participants need to distribute some tokens,and in " dictator games B" participants need to distribute the task of "soaking in the cold water", and the decision in the latter one measures Type A altruistic behavior level, and the decision in the former one measures Type A altruistic behavior level. So that we can analysis and compare the influence of trust on different types of altruistic behavior.The first study is a related research, including two small experiments to verify the relationship between the trust and different types of altruistic behavior.In experiment 1a, participants conducted single round "trust game", single round "dictator game A", and the self-reported of their own trust state. The result shows that each two among the state of individual trust, trust behavior and Type A altruistic behavior relating significantly.In experiment lb, participants completed single round of "trust game", single round of "dictator game B", and the self-reported of their own trust state. The result shows that both the relationship between the state of individual trust and Type B altruistic behavior, and the relationship between the rust behavior and Type B altruistic behavior is not significantly related.The second study is an experimental research, exploring the influence of the change of trust level on Type A altruistic behavior.Participants were randomly assigned to the high feedback group, the control group and the low feedback group, completing three rounds of the "trust game", three rounds of "the dictator game A", finally assessing their own trust state level. Three rounds of "trust game" were conducted to control the level of the participants’trust, participants in high feedback group always getting higher feedback than their investment, participants in low feedback group always getting lower feedback than their investment, participants in the control group subjects knowing nothing of their partners’ feedback.Three rounds of the dictator game A" were altruistic testing, measuring the level of participants’Type A altruistic behavior after the trust control. Finally, the self-reported is to test the change of individual trust state after trust control.Results show that:in the third round" trust game" investment, participants in high feedback group and control group both increased their investment significantly,while participants in low feedback group did not change theirs investment significantly. After the trust control, participants in high feedback group have higher level of trust state and Type A altruistic behavior than control group, and participants in low feedback group has the same level of trust state and altruistic behavior as the control group.The conclusion of this study:(1) Trust state can influence the individual Type A altruistic behavior, namely trust state can affect altruistic behavior associated with the loss of economic interests, but we do not find the influence of trust state to the altruistic behavior associated with suffering physical pain.(2) After trust control, the change of trust behavior is inconsistent with the change of the trust in the control group, which indicates that besides trust state other factors can also affect trust behavior.(3) The change of individual trust state is not symmetrical:in this experiment, the individual trust state level significantly increased after continuous positive feedback, but trust state level has not dropped significantly after continuous negative feedback. The change of trust state shows the characteristics of "easy to improve, hard to reduce".