Trust and Trust Funds: Behavior and Expectations Based on Others’ Childhood and Current Social Class Context
Abstract: Trust is vital for success in all kinds of social interactions. But how do people decide whether an individual can be trusted? One factor people may consider is that individual’s social class. We hypothesize that people trust others from lower social class contexts more than others from higher class contexts; we also consider nuances between current and childhood class context, and between trust as a behavior and trust as an expectation. Five pre-registered studies and eleven pre-registered replications consistently found that people behaviorally trusted targets who experienced lower (compared to higher) social class contexts, either in childhood or currently. But, only childhood (not current) social class context had a parallel influence on trust expectations, and perceived morality only mediated the effect of childhood (not current) social class on trust. Exploratory analyses tentatively suggested that the higher trust in currently lower class others is driven by altruistic motives. These effects emerged in samples drawn from different populations, across varying manipulations of social class, in actual and hypothetical decisions, and with imaginary targets and real acquaintances. We consider the practical implications for understanding social interactions and relationships in organizations.
Dr. Stéphane Côté
Stéphane Côté is Geoffrey Conway Chair in Business Ethics, Professor of Organizational Behaviour, and Director of the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at Rotman. His research focuses on how emotional intelligence relates to well-being and performance, and how social class and inequality relate to prosocial and ethical behavior in social and organizational settings. He is an Associate Editor at Administrative Science Quarterly and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, International Association of Applied Psychology and Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He teaches courses on emotional intelligence in the MBA and Commerce programs.