Let Me Help You Help Me
This chapter develops the view that interpersonal trust cannot be fully understood by the lights of rational decision theory or social norms and preferences. Trust is a dilemma because the person deciding whether to trust must reconcile the conflicting demands of own well-being with the demands of prosociality. This chapter considers three types of social situation of (inter)dependence: the dictator game, which is played unilaterally, the assurance game, which is played bilaterally and simultaneously, and the trust game proper, which is played bilaterally and sequentially. Findings show that the dictator game, which models the situation of the person being trusted, is ill-suited to isolate social preferences. Empirical results may over- or underestimate the willingness to share. A simulation shows that individuals’ social preferences rarely predict the distribution of wealth. Analysis of the assurance game (or “stag hunt”) and the trust game proper yield similar results.