Li Mei, Tang DengFang, Pan Wenbin, Zhang Yujie, Lu Jiachen, Li Hong
Department of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 Jan 22. doi: 10.3758/s13415-024-01259-9.
Promises are widely used to increase trust in social status; yet how promise levels and social status influence trust behavior and its underlying neurophysiological mechanisms remain unclear. We used a modified trust game to investigate the effects of promise levels and social status on trust behavior. Participants, as investors paired with trustees of varying social status who were given the opportunity to promise to return different levels of money, were required to decide to whether trust the trustees. In Experiment 1, trustees promised to return high-, medium-, or low-level money to participants, and no return feedback was provided. In Experiment 2, trustees promised to return high- and low-level money to participants. Return feedback was provided and event-related potential (ERP) data were recorded. The behavioral results indicated that participants trusted high-status partners more than low-status partners, regardless of the promise level. The ERP results showed that with low-status partners, the N2 was more negative and the P3 was smaller under low-level promise conditions than under high-level promise conditions. However, with high-status partner, there were no differences in N2 and P3 between high- and low-level promise conditions. Our findings suggest that social status may affect the perception of potential risks across different promise levels in trust.
承诺被广泛用于增强对社会地位的信任；然而，承诺水平和社会地位如何影响信任行为及其潜在的神经生理机制仍不清楚。我们使用了一种改良的信任博弈来研究承诺水平和社会地位对信任行为的影响。参与者作为投资者与不同社会地位的受托人配对，这些受托人有机会承诺返还不同数额的金钱，参与者需要决定是否信任这些受托人。在实验1中，受托人承诺向参与者返还高、中、低水平的金钱，且不提供返还反馈。在实验2中，受托人承诺向参与者返还高、低水平的金钱。提供返还反馈并记录事件相关电位（ERP）数据。行为结果表明，无论承诺水平如何，参与者对高地位伙伴的信任都高于低地位伙伴。ERP结果显示，对于低地位伙伴，低水平承诺条件下的N2波更负，P3波更小，而高水平承诺条件下则相反。然而，对于高地位伙伴，高水平和低水平承诺条件下的N2波和P3波没有差异。我们的研究结果表明，社会地位可能会影响在信任中对不同承诺水平潜在风险的感知。
