Age-group differences in trust-related decision-making and learning

Perceptual judgments are resistant to the advisor's perceived level of trustworthiness: A deep fake approach

As we navigate our environment, we frequently make spontaneous judgments about other's characteristics. Trustworthiness is a particularly important trait, often judged instantly and used to guide decisions, especially in uncertain situations. Although the impact of trustworthiness on social behaviour is well-documented, its influence on more fundamental cognitive processes, such as perceptual decision-making, remains unclear. The present study aims to fill this gap. In the first experiment (N =  100), we validated a new trustworthiness manipulation by applying deep fake technology to create animated versions of perceptually trustworthy, untrustworthy, and neutral static computer-generated faces. In the second experiment (N =  199), the deep fake procedure was applied to a new set of trustworthy and untrustworthy faces that served as advisors during a perceptual decision-making task. Here participants had to indicate the direction of dots that were either moving coherently to the left or the right (i.e., random dot motion task). Contrary to our predictions, participants did not align more with the advice of trustworthy advisors than that of untrustworthy advisors. While participants made faster decisions and reported greater confidence when aligning with the advice, these effects were not influenced by the advisor's perceived trustworthiness. We integrate our findings within theoretical frameworks of advice taking, domain specificity of facial trustworthiness, and task requirements.

Direct reciprocity and reputation shape trust decisions similarly in blind and sighted individuals

This study addresses the effects of blindness on trust. Using an auditory version of the multi-round Trust Game, we investigated the effect of reputation and reciprocity on trust decisions in early blind and sighted participants. During each round of the game, participants were endowed with a sum of money and had to decide how much they wanted to invest in their partners, who were manipulated as a function of their good or bad reputation and individualistic or cooperative behavior. The data showed that negative first impression about the partner (bad reputation and/or selfish behavior) impacted more blind participants than sighted ones. However, following repeated interactions with the partners, the overall mean investment aligned between the blind and sighted groups. We interpret these findings as suggesting that blindness may guide participants to a more cautionary behavior when dealing with partners with negative initial characteristics.