Trust in Social Dilemmas

One of the key scientific challenges is the puzzle of human cooperation. Why do people cooperate with one another? What causes individuals to lend a helping hand to a stranger, even if it comes at a major cost to their own well-being? Why do people severely punish those who violate social norms and undermine the collective interest? Edited by Paul A.M. Van Lange, Bettina Rockenbach, and Toshio Yamagishi, Trust in Social Dilemmas carefully considers the role of trust in establishing, promoting, and maintaining overall human cooperation.

By exploring the impact of trust and effective cooperation on relationships, organizations, and communities, Trust in Social Dilemmas draws inspiration from the fact that social dilemmas, defined in terms of conflicts between self-interest and the collective interest, are omnipresent in today's society. In capturing the breadth and relevance of trust to social dilemmas and human cooperation more generally, this book is structured in three effective parts for readers: the biology and development of trust; the importance of trust for groups and organizations; and how trust factors across the overall health of today's society.

As Van Lange, Rockenbach, Yamagishi, and their team of expert contributors all explore in this compelling new volume, there is little doubt that trust and cooperation are intimately related in most - if not all - of our social dilemmas.

Paul A.M. Van Lange is Professor and Chair in Social Interaction and Interdependence at VU University in Amsterdam.

Bettina Rockenbach is Professor of Experimental and Behavioral Economics at the University of Cologne.

Toshio Yamagishi is Professor of Behavioral Science at the Graduate School of Letters of Hokkaido University in Japan.

Preface

Chapter 1: Trust: Introduction and Trending Topics
Paul A.M. Van Lange, Bettina Rockenbach, and Toshio Yamagishi

Chapter 2: Trust and Social Dilemmas: A Selected Review of Evidence and Applications
Karen S. Cook and Bogdan State

Part I: Biology and Development of Trust
Chapter 3: The Neurobiology of Trust and Cooperation: The Important Role of Emotions
Jan B. Engelmann and Ernst Fehr

Chapter 4: Neuroendrocrine Pathways to In-Group Bounded Trust and Cooperation
Carsten K.W. De Dreu and Michael Giffin

Chapter 5: The Foundations of Individuals' Generalized Social Trust: A Review
Peter Thisted Dinesen and René Bekkers

Chapter 6: How Trust in Social Dilemmas Evolves with Age
Martin G. Kocher

Part II: Trust in Dyads, Groups, and Organizations
Chapter 7: Let Me Help You Help Me: Trust Between Profit and Prosociality
Joachim I. Krueger, Anthony M. Evans, and Patrick R. Heck

Chapter 8: The Mysteries of Trust: Trusting Too Little and Too Much at the Same Time
Detlef Fetchenhauer, David Dunning, and Thomas Schlösser

Chapter 9: Trust and Cooperation: Survey Evidence and Behavioral Experiments
Christian Thöni

Chapter 10: The Future of Organizational Trust Research: A Content-Analytic Synthesis of Scholarly Recommendations and Review of Recent Developments
Bart A. de Jong, David P. Kroon, and Oliver Schilke

Part III: Trust in Different Cultures
Chapter 11: Individualism-Collectivism, the Rule of Law, and General Trust
Toshio Yamagishi

Chapter 12: The Influence of Globalization and Ethnic Fractionalization on Cooperation and Trust in Kenya
Nancy R. Buchan and Robert Rolfe

Chapter 13: Improving Outcomes in the Trust Game: The Games People Choose in Oman, the United States, and Vietnam
Iris Bohnet, Benedikt Herrmann, Maliheh Paryavi, Anh Tran, and Richard Zeckhauser

Chapter 14: Trust in African Villages: Experimental Evidence from Rural Sierra Leone
Paul Hofman, Erwin Bulte, and Maarten Voors