Imagine this scenario: two people cheat on their partners with each other and then leave their partners to be together. Should they trust each other or does the saying “once a traitor, always a traitor” apply?
Intuition and previous research suggest that people decide whether someone is trustworthy based on past behavior and a reputation for betrayal. However, a new study by psychologists from UCLA and Oklahoma State University (USA) tries to explain why certain people who betray can still be considered trustworthy.
Here’s the paradox of trust: when we benefit from someone’s betrayal, we tend to view that person as, paradoxically, trustworthy. Experiments have shown that although subjects tend to perceive those who have betrayed others as less trustworthy, when the betrayal brings them a benefit, they view the betrayers as more trustworthy.
The study was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
The paradox of trust. The role of the concept of “trust” in relationships
According to the researchers, evaluations related to trust in someone are used to make adaptive decisions, that is, decisions that benefit us. Thus, although people are aware of someone’s reputation as a cheater, the researchers predicted that relationship-specific factors and the impact of the betrayal on them would influence perceptions of that person.
“Making decisions about who is trustworthy based solely on the fact that that person has betrayed someone is not always the best strategy,” explained Jaimie Krems, study co-author and professor of psychology at UCLA.
“Sure, if someone betrays others, that may be an indication that they might betray me, but that’s not always the case. For example, think of that friend who tells you other friends’ secrets but not yours. That person betrays others, but gives you valuable information,” Krems added.
This was the central idea of the research: the human mind should be attentive both to a person’s reputation for betrayal and to how that person’s betrayal directly affects us.
What experiments were carried out?
The researchers designed several experiments to test whether people consider certain people more trustworthy based on the impact of betrayal on them.
Participants were exposed to three types of scenarios: sharing secrets between friends, romantic infidelity, and an international espionage situation where they played the role of CIA agents trying to recruit a French official.
In each scenario, subjects rated people who engaged in one of three behaviors: they did not betray anyone, they betrayed someone else for the participant’s benefit, or they betrayed the participant for someone else’s benefit. After reading the scenarios, participants rated their trust in those people on a scale of 1 to 7.
As expected, participants rated people who had never betrayed anyone as more trustworthy and those who had. However, betrayers were not perceived as negatively if their betrayal benefited the participants. This pattern was consistent regardless of the type of relationship, whether friendship, romantic or professional, points out Phys.org.
The results confirm the researchers’ hypothesis that trustworthiness judgments reflect not only the general character of a person, but also factors specific to the relationship with that person.
The study points out that while people may start out with high ideals of trust, in practice their decisions are often driven by self-interest.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
