Abstract
Recent research has revealed the effects of direct experience on learning about individuals’ trust behavior. To extend this finding, two studies were designed to investigate the extent to which trust-related interaction with intergroup members influenced group-based trust behavior and trustworthiness based on Chinese cultural backgrounds. In the experience phase, southern Chinese (participants) played preprogrammed reciprocity-feedback trust games with intergroup partners. In the subsequent formal experimental phase, they played the one-shot trust games with the members of southerners (the ingroup) and northerners (the outgroup) (Study 1) or made trustworthiness estimations about the two groups (Study 2) to respectively measure the intergroup trust behavior and trustworthiness. Results indicated that the trust-related direct experience with unfamiliar intergroup members affected subsequent trust behavior towards the ingroup and the outgroup, but had no effects on the trustworthiness of the intergroup members. Additionally, southern Chinese exhibited similar trust behavior towards the ingroup irrespective of the reciprocation received from the ingroup, but displayed more trust acts towards the outgroup when receiving most than least reciprocation from the outgroup. These findings were discussed in relation to reciprocity expectation, Chinese cultures and differences in trustworthiness and trust behavior.
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The data were available on the platform of figshare with the link https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19195943.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the financial support of the Fellowship of the13th Five-Year Plan for Philosophy and Social Sciences in Guangdong Province in China (No. GD18CXL01).
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The first author contributed to the study conception, design and data analysis. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Xueqing Ruan. The first draft of the manuscript was written by the first author and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This study was supported by the Fellowship of the 13th Five-Year Plan for Philosophy and Social Sciences in Guangdong Province in China (No. GD18CXL01) awarded to Wenjie Wu.
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Wu, W., Yuan, X. Effects of group-based experience on intergroup trust within Chinese cultures. Curr Psychol 42, 27646–27655 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03877-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03877-3