Summary: New research finds that people are more likely to place trust in others who were raised in lower-income households than in those who grew up with financial advantages. Across multiple experiments with nearly 2,000 participants, people consistently showed greater behavioral trust toward individuals described as having modest upbringings, and they perceived those individuals as more moral and more likely to reciprocate trust.
Notably, a person’s current socioeconomic status influenced behavior less than their childhood background. Participants sometimes acted trusting toward those who were currently lower-income, but they only believed that people who had grown up with limited means would return that trust.
Key Facts:
- Behavioral trust: Participants transferred more resources to people described as having lower-income childhoods.
- Perceived morality: Individuals raised in modest households were judged as more moral and trustworthy.
- Childhood vs. present: Childhood social class had a stronger effect on expectations of reciprocity than current socioeconomic status.
Source: APA
People tend to trust those who grew up with less money more than those who attended private schools or took luxury vacations, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
“Trust is essential for healthy relationships. Without it, romantic partnerships can falter, workplaces can suffer and social divisions can deepen,” said lead researcher Kristin Laurin, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia.
To investigate what drives trust, the research team conducted a series of experiments with more than 1,900 people. The studies tested whether a person’s social class—either during childhood or at the time of the interaction—shapes how trustworthy they appear to strangers. The findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In one common task, participants played a trust game with profiles they believed represented other real players but that were actually fictional. Each participant created a profile and then received profiles for others in their group. Some profiles described people who had grown up with less money—examples included attending public schools or working part-time as a youth—while other profiles described more privileged backgrounds, such as private schooling or overseas vacations.
In the trust game, each “truster” started with 10 raffle tickets for a drawing of two $100 gift cards. They could transfer any number of their tickets to another player (the “trustee”). Any tickets given to a trustee were tripled, and the trustee then had the option to return any number of those tickets to the original player. The number of tickets entrusted reflected behavioral trust—the degree to which participants were willing to put themselves at another player’s mercy.
The study also measured trust as an expectation by asking participants to predict how many tickets a trustee would return if given all 10 tickets. In other versions of the experiment, profiles were adjusted to indicate a trustee’s current socioeconomic status, and participants rated each player’s morality.
Across experiments, participants consistently transferred more tickets to trustees described as having grown up in lower-income households, demonstrating higher behavioral trust toward people with modest childhoods. Participants also expected that players who grew up poor would be more likely to reciprocate that trust and rated them as more moral.
When profiles emphasized a trustee’s current low socioeconomic status, people sometimes acted as if they trusted those individuals, but they did not reliably expect them to return that trust or view them as more moral. In those cases, the behavioral trust toward currently lower-income individuals appeared linked to perceptions of altruism rather than moral character.
“Our research shows that people draw a clear distinction between someone’s childhood background and their present circumstances,” Laurin said. “Participants generally saw people who grew up in lower-class homes as more moral and more likely to honor trust. By contrast, current class sometimes influenced behavior without changing expectations about reciprocity.”
The findings suggest people may benefit from being strategic about how they present their backgrounds in social contexts where trust matters. “If you’ve always been wealthy, you might choose to emphasize aspects of your current character rather than a privileged past, whereas highlighting humble roots could be advantageous for someone who grew up struggling,” Laurin said.
Laurin emphasized that the studies reveal perceptions and behavior, not whether people from lower-income backgrounds are actually more trustworthy. “We did not test whether childhood or current class truly affects a person’s behavior,” she said. “That remains an important question for future research, particularly to understand when trust is misplaced or when opportunities to build fair trust are missed.”
About this psychology research news
Author: James Sliwa
Source: APA
Contact: James Sliwa – APA
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Trust and Trust Funds: How Others’ Childhood and Current Social Class Context Influence Trust Behavior and Expectations” by Kristin Laurin et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Abstract
Trust and Trust Funds: How Others’ Childhood and Current Social Class Context Influence Trust Behavior and Expectations
Trust is essential for success across many kinds of social interactions. One factor people may consider when deciding whether to trust another person is that person’s social class. This research tested whether people trust individuals from lower-class contexts more than those from higher-class contexts, and whether childhood versus current class matters differently for trust as behavior and for trust as expectation.
Across five preregistered studies (total N = 1,934) and 12 preregistered replications summarized in the supplement, two main patterns emerged. First, participants consistently showed greater behavioral trust toward others whose childhoods were spent in lower-class contexts compared with higher-class childhoods, and they expected those childhood-lower-class individuals to honor that trust. Perceived morality mediated these effects.
Second, participants sometimes behaviorally trusted others currently in lower-class contexts compared with those currently in higher-class contexts, but they did not expect these currently lower-class individuals to reciprocate trust or perceive them as more moral. Instead, the effect of current class on behavioral trust was linked to perceptions of altruism.
These results were robust across diverse samples, multiple ways of describing social class, decisions made both hypothetically and for real, and targets that ranged from imaginary players to acquaintances. The findings have implications for understanding how social class shapes trust and for future studies examining the accuracy of trust judgments and when trust is extended fairly.