Competition and Trust

We test the impact of intra-group competition on reported trust in a laboratory setting. We use standard measures of trust, incentivised games and survey questions to measure trust. We place individuals into randomly selected public goods games teams where rewards are shared equally. Rewards depend on one's group contributing more to the public goods game than a randomly assigned competitor group. We vary the degree to which teams are disadvantaged/advantaged in this competition. There are 5 treatments -- groups that are 10% advantaged, meaning they will be recorded as the winner if they are either above or up to 10% below the competitor team, groups that are 50% advantaged, groups that are 10% disadvantaged, groups that are 50% disadvantaged, and groups that are equal, 0% advantage. After playing the PGG game they will then be measured on the trust dimension again. This experiment is a continuation of research on the relationship between pro-social behavior and competition. In a paper published in Science Advances (2018) we showed that individuals employed in more competitive sectors are also individuals who respond positively to the generalized trust question. We found that individuals placed in more competitive PGG settings also responded more positive to the generalised trust question. All of those were in settings where the playing field was level, i.e., the 0% treatment above. Here we are seeing whether non-level playing field affects those results. We conjecture that the positive effect of enhanced competition could be mitigated by being disadvantaged. We are unsure what effect this will have on the advantaged groups.