Trust and reciprocity: implications of game triads and social contexts

Abstract

Trust and reciprocity have been observed in experiments with simple stylized games. Such characteristics of social preferences have been observed to vary with procedures that alter the social environment in an experiment, such as single blind or double blind payoff protocols. This paper reports an experiment on the effects of a change in the social context of an experiment on trust and reciprocity. The strong social context introduces a stylized version of a characteristic of everyday life in large cities: a player in one game knows that other games lie ahead but does not know precisely what those games will turn out to be nor with whom they will be played.