身份与信任——基于干部身份的实验证据

SOCIAL IDENTITY AND TRUSTWORTHINESS——Evidence from an Investment Experiment in China

本文设计了由中国大学生被试作为委托人和受托人的投资实验,通过在实验中"泄露"不同完备和对称程度的信息,检验了在"无信息"、"单向信息"和"双向信息"三种不同的环境下,"学生干部"这一社会身份对"信任"和"值得信任"水平的影响。研究发现:首先,多数中国学生被试之间存在着彼此信任和值得信任,这使得双方实现了"双赢"。其次,受托人的干部身份,招致了委托人更高的可信任度;但干部在其身份信息不公开时,并不比无信息状态下的受托人更值得信任。再次,双向信息的干部身份可以显著提升干部的互利性,使得他们比无信息状态下的受托人有着更高的值得信任的水平。

We designed an investment experiment with college students as subjects to examine the de gree of trustworthiness of leaders in China. Using a double-blind setting of the experiment, we compare the difference in the amount of paying back between the leader trustee and non-leader trustee. We built a second experiment that the identity information about the leader trustee is unilaterally provided to trustor, and tested whether or not the decision making of the trustor and trustee changes. Using a third experiment in which the identity information about the leader trustee is common knowledge, we test the effect of this information on the degree of reciprocity of leaders. We find as follows： First, in a blind setting, there is no significant difference in the decision making between the leaders and non-leaders as trustee. Second, the exposed information about the identity of the leader trustee either in a unilateral information setting or common knowledge setting induces more trust of trustor. Third, in the setting that his/her identity is common knowledge, a leader trustee significant increases the degree of reciprocity. We conclude that lead- ers are not instinctively more trustworthy. However, they can reciprocate more given some information re- vealed. Our research strongly supports the necessity of an institutional environment that policy makings are transparent and are supervised by public.