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Trust, Values and False Consensus / Jeffrey Butler, Paola Giuliano, Luigi Guiso.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Butler, Jeffrey.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w18460.
- NBER working paper series no. w18460
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.
- Summary:
- Trust beliefs are heterogeneous across individuals and, at the same time, persistent across generations. We investigate one mechanism yielding these dual patterns: false consensus. In the context of a trust game experiment, we show that individuals extrapolate from their own type when forming trust beliefs about the same pool of potential partners - i.e., more (less) trustworthy individuals form more optimistic (pessimistic) trust beliefs - and that this tendency continues to color trust beliefs after several rounds of game-play. Moreover, we show that one's own type/trustworthiness can be traced back to the values parents transmit to their children during their upbringing. In a second closely-related experiment, we show the economic impact of mis-calibrated trust beliefs stemming from false consensus. Miscalibrated beliefs lower participants' experimental trust game earnings by about 20 percent on average.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- October 2012.
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