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Cited by 148Evolutionary Game Theory and CooperationExperimental Behavioral Economics StudiesEvolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior

The evolution of trust and trustworthiness

Open access
Kumar, Aanjaneya, Capraro, Valerio, Perc, Matjaž·2020·Journal of The Royal Society Interface
DOI 10.1098/rsif.2020.0491PMC PMC7482572
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Abstract

Trust and trustworthiness form the basis for continued social and economic interactions, and they are also fundamental for cooperation, fairness, honesty, and indeed for many other forms of prosocial and moral behaviour. However, trust entails risks, and building a trustworthy reputation requires effort. So how did trust and trustworthiness evolve, and under which conditions do they thrive? To find answers, we operationalize trust and trustworthiness using the trust game with the trustor's investment and the trustee's return of the investment as the two key parameters. We study this game on different networks, including the complete network, random and scale-free networks, and in the well-mixed limit. We show that in all but one case, the network structure has little effect on the evolution of trust and trustworthiness. Specifically, for well-mixed populations, lattices, random and scale-free networks, we find that trust never evolves, while trustworthiness evolves with some probability depending on the game parameters and the updating dynamics. Only for the scale-free network with degree non-normalized dynamics, we find parameter values for which trust evolves but trustworthiness does not, as well as values for which both trust and trustworthiness evolve. We conclude with a discussion about mechanisms that could lead to the evolution of trust and outline directions for future work.

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Authors
Kumar, A., Capraro, V., & Perc, M.
Affiliations
  • Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune (IN)
  • Middlesex University London (GB)
  • China Medical University (TW)
Corresponding author
Capraro, Valerio
ORCID
Venue
Journal of The Royal Society Interface
Publisher
The Royal Society
Published
2020-08
Volume
17
Issue
169
Pages
20200491
ISSN
  • 1742-5662 (ISSN-L)
  • 1742-5689
DOI
10.1098/rsif.2020.0491
PMC
PMC7482572
OpenAlex
W3048692749
Cited by
148
References
97
Citations by year
2026: 27 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 7
FWCI
21.40
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of The Royal Society Interface (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Middlesex University Research Repository (Middlesex University Of London) (acceptedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • BOA (University of Milano-Bicocca) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
Keywords
trustworthiness, trust game, cooperation, social networks, scale-free networks, random networks, well-mixed populations, lattice networks, reputation, prosocial behavior, evolutionary dynamics
MeSH terms
Probability, Trust

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