This page was updated on December 18, 2009.
Photos from my Flickr set. Hover, click & drag, zoom, wow!
This project is found in the context of human behavior and information design. Keywords: behavior, decision-making, emotions, psychology, rationality, reciprocity, risk, science, social psychology, thesis, trust, writing. Meta keywords: image:photo, medium:image.
An exploration of emotions specific to trusting
Trust As Feelings
My thesis, completed in October 2007, is a product of the Department of Economic and Social Psychology, Universität zu Köln, Germany. It was honored by by Research fund GWSF as best empirical diploma thesis of the year 2007. This work culminates my studies of business administration and social sciences. The paper was co-authored with Jan Bruch. The research was supervised by Dr. Detlef Fetchenhauer.
Highlights
- Trusting is experienced with specific emotions that cause a risk-taking bias.
- People find it easier to take a risk when it involves trusting another person, compared to the same decision framed as a gamble.
- Emotions are decisive, but do not suffice as sole predictors of behavior.
- A controlled appraisal of emotions does not subdue automatic responses, and is only additive in effect.
What I have done
- conducted research experiment
- researched scientific literature
- created figures and tables
- applied statistical analysis
- wrote manuscript (APA style, 61 pages, 19.938 words)
“... why do people find it easier to accept a risk of losing money when this involves the prospect of being exploited by a trustee, compared to the prospect of having bad luck in a coin flip?” — Excerpt from the introduction
To understand why people trust each other, social psychologists have begun to address emotions as a possible key concept. To identify emotions specific to trusting and to analyze their impact on behavior, I conducted an experiment with 189 students. The set of emotions found is described in great detail in Trust As Feelings. This work can be viewed as one of the first attempts to dismantle emotions in a highly descriptive way within the causal chain between situational stimuli and decision-making.
The results show how trusting is different from other decisions that involve risk. Emotions turn out to be decisive during the process of deciding whether or not to trust another person, but not to a degree that a focus on them alone could resolve the often puzzling patterns of trust behavior.
more info
@Alexome | Shufflesome
