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Why do promises affect trustworthiness, or do they?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Huseyn Ismayilov  and
Jan Potters
Huseyn Ismayilov*
Affiliation:
The School of Business, ADA University, 11 Ahmadbey Aghaoglu Street, 1008 Baku, Azerbaijan CentER and Netspar, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Jan Potters*
Affiliation:
CentER and Netspar, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

We set out to test whether the effect of promises on trustworthiness derives from the fact that they are made (internal consistency) or that they are received (social obligation). The results of an experimental trust game appeared at first to support the former mechanism. Even when trustee messages are not delivered to trustors, trustees who make a promise are more likely to act trustworthy than those who do not make a promise. However, we subsequently ran a control treatment with restricted (non-promise) communication to examine whether the correlation between promises and trustworthiness is causal. The results show that the absence of promises does not decrease average cooperation rates. This indicates that promises do not induce trustworthiness, they are just more likely to be sent by cooperators than by non-cooperators.

Keywords

PromisesCommunicationCommitmentEndogeneityExperimentC91D03D82L15
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 382 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-015-9444-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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