学术前沿
an intermediary enhances outgroup trust and ingroup profit expectation of chinese but not australian
by jiawen ye and sik hung ng
department of applied social sciences, city university of hong kong
department of psychology, renmin university of china
international journal of psychology 2015. doi: 10.1002/ijop.12100
research background
❖ trust-distrust dilemma
in daily life we often have to decide whether to trust others
whose trustworthiness is unknown for lack of reliable
information on their benevolence, integrity and
competence to reciprocate
❖ universal group-based trust
both westerners (e.g. americans) and east asians (e.g.
japanese) trust ingroup more than outgroup (yamagishi,
makimura, foddy, kiyonari, & platow, 2005; yuki,
maddux, brewer, & takemura, 2005)
❖ east asian relationship-based trust
in a minimal group experimental condition, wherein
participant merely had a potential personal connection
with an outgroup member, east asians (e.g. japanese) but
not westerners (e.g. american) investors increased their
outgroup trust, possibly due to japanese’ greater relational
self and stronger cultural endorsement of interdependent
self-contrual (yuki et al., 2005)
research purpose
research so far has ignored the role of a nominal
intermediary in trust-distrust dilemmas. based on chinese
communication and guanxi characteristics relative to
australians, we hypothesised that a nominal intermediary
would increase trust and reciprocal expectation of chinese
but not australians in an experimental investment game
played between two minimal groups (“blue” versus “red”
group) method
participants. participants were 79 australians (mage = 20.81,
41 females and 38 males) recruited on the campus of australian
national university, canberra, australia; and 88 chinese
(mage = 18.97, 41 females and 47 males) from south china
normal university, guangzhou, china.
experimental design: 2 × 3 × (2) mixed design
ivs. nationality: chinese vs. australian
intermediary: intermediary absent vs. ingroup
intermediary (ii) vs. outgroup intermediary (oi)
trustee’s group membership: ingroup vs. outgroup
the intermediary absent condition represented the direct
trust situation for comparison with the intermediarymediated
trust situations represented by the ingroup and
outgroup intermediary conditions.
dvs. trust: amount of money to invest in a trustee (il)
expected reciprocity: amount of payback money expected
from the trustee (er)
investment game procedure
❖ six participants played the game at a time and were randomly
assigned to “red” or “blue” group
❖ each participant played the role of an investor to decide how much
money to invest (il) in the trustee, who was either an in-group or outgroup
member, either in the absence of an intermediary or the
presence of an in-group or out-group intermediary
❖ investment money would be doubled by the computer for the trustee
to decide how much of the doubled money to pay back to the investor
and how much to keep for self
❖ the payback money might be greater, the same as, or smaller than the
investment money
❖ before receiving the payback money from the trustee, the investor
would indicate privately the amount he/she would expect (er)
❖ each participant played the investment trust game four times with two
ingroup and two outgroup trustees in random order
results
trust
❖ in-group trust was greater than out-group trust in both
australians (ms = 6.29 vs. 5.15, f(1,76) = 30.71, p < .
001) and chinese (ms = 6.84 vs. 5.36, f(1,79) = 43.69,
p < .001)
❖ a nominal intermediary increased the trust of out-group
by chinese (ms = 5.74 vs. 5.19, f(1,151) = 3.79, p < .
05, one-tailed) but not by australians
❖ as predicted there was no intermediary effect on ingroup
expected reciprocity
❖ for analysis investors were divided into a high (er>il)
and a low (er≤il) expectation group. the former
expected trustees to pay back a profit (gain group)
whereas the latter did not (no-gain group)
❖ preliminary test confirmed that the gain and no-gain
groups did not differ in their trust, that is, expected
reciprocity was not confounded by trust
❖ when an intermediary was present (ii & oi conditions)
more chinese than australians expected to gain from
their investment in in-group trustees; this effect of the
intermediary was not significant for out-group trustees.
conclusion
by adding a nominal intermediary to the intergroup trust game
experimental paradigm, this study has brought out variations in
intergroup trust along cultural lines. chinese, but not australians,
responded to the presence of a nominal intermediary with
increased trust in the outgroup and more common expectations
that their ingroup trustees would reciprocate by sharing the profit
from their investment.