Experimental-economic measures of trust and trustworthiness

I am interested in determining the cues we use to judge trustworthiness. I am currently collaborating with Daniel Krupp and Margo Wilson on the effects of self-resemblance in public goods games.

Trust game
A two-player trust game. The first player can choose an equal allocation of 3 units to each player, or can let the seconf player choose between a better equal allocation (4 to each player) or a selfish allocation (keeping 6 and giving the first player 2).

Toshio Yamagishi found that people could correctly detect cheaters by their face photographs. Using computer graphic techniques, we are exploring what facial cues are associated with the behaviours of cheating and cooperating, and also what facial cues cause people to percieve another person as a cheater or cooperator.

In collaboration with Daniel Krupp and Margo Wilson at McMaster University, we are looking at how the proportion of “kin” in a public goods game affects players’ propentisty to cooperate and punish.

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