Can Groups Be Trusted? An Experimental Study Of Trust In Collective Entities

Several previous studies measure the extent to which individuals trust other individuals and demonstrate that such interpersonal trust is an important element of interactions in organizations and markets. However, a related topic is the extent to which it is possible for individuals to trust groups as separate entities. The notion of individuals trusting collective entities has been previously discussed in the literature but not carefully demonstrated. We conduct an experiment that specifically address the question of whether it is possible for individuals to exhibit trust for a group, beyond the trust they exhibit for individual members of that group. Using the trust (or investment) game, our results show that individuals do exhibit trust for collective entities: They transfer perceptions of trustworthiness to individuals based on previous experiences with members of that individual's group, even with a very minimal form of group membership.