What question did this study set out to answer?

This research examines what drives trust in strangers: obligations or desires.

May 25, 2026Acta Psychologica0 citationsOpen Access

Do you feel obliged to trust in strangers? The role of obligations, desires and expectations on trust

SOSantiago Ordóñez-RiañoUniversidad de Los Andes WJWilliam Jiménez-LealUniversidad de Los Andes

Key Points

This research examines what drives trust in strangers: obligations or desires.
Two studies were conducted with a total of 678 participants across online and laboratory contexts.
Used a binary trust game to assess trust levels in different settings.
Analyzed the impact of obligations and desires on trust behaviors.
Both obligations and desires significantly predicted trust in the online platform.
In the laboratory context, the desire to trust had a stronger influence than the obligation to trust.
Findings suggest that motivational factors are context-dependent.

Abstract

What motivates people to place trust in strangers—the sense that they ought to trust, or the feeling that they want to? Competing perspectives suggest that trust may be driven either by obligations or by desires. In two studies, we tested the role of these motivational forces in the tendency to trust strangers using a binary trust game in both an online setting (Study 1, n = 241; Study 2 , n = 275) and a laboratory context (Study 1, n = 163). Our results confirm that both obligations and desires are good predictors of trust in an online platform. However, contrary to our hypothesis, wanting to trust had a greater relevance than feeling the obligation to trust in the laboratory setting. We discuss the results in terms of the interplay between norms, emotions, and preferences.

Perguntar à IA

Bookmark

View Full Paper