Is trust your choice, or does your brain decide for you?

TUCSON, Ariz. – April 24, 2014 – Let’s say in 14  years your accountant has never steered you wrong. Then you realize he made a  costly mistake on your last tax return. Do you go back to him this year or ask  around for someone new? Chances are, he’ll be sorting your receipts once more,  according to research by Martin Reimann of the University of Arizona’s Eller  College of Management.

The critical  variable in two studies conducted by Reimann and colleagues Oliver Schilke of  UCLA and Karen Cook of Stanford University was experience: When we have limited  experience with people and they let us down early on, we’re a lot less likely  to forgive that breach than if we’d had a history of good relations.

The researchers  pierced that veil by way of a simple but clever study. First, they explained  that everyone had an anonymous partner. Participants would start with a virtual  $8 that they could keep for themselves or give to their partners through the  study’s computer network. If they handed it over, that $8 became $24, which  their partners could then keep or split so that each had $12. The fun continued  in rounds until facilitators called time.

Here’s the catch:  That so-called partner was actually just a few lines of computer code written  to keep the $24 at some point — essentially a betrayal of the sharing behavior  — sometimes early on, sometimes later in the game.

You might think  that people would uniformly mistrust once they lost their $8, or that there  would be no pattern to behaviors. You might think forgiveness is mostly a  function of personality, past experience, and whether or not someone is having a  bad hair day.

In fact, a clear  pattern did emerge: People were significantly more likely to hold onto their $8  when the computer betrayed them early on. If that breach happened later in the  game, they were more likely to hand over the $8 and give their partners another  chance.

What explains that  pattern? It turns out those breaches fired up different parts of the brain.  With new participants wired for fMRI scans while they played, the researchers  saw that when computers broke faith early on, the games slowed while the area  of the brain linked to learning and problem-solving got busy, as did the part  that fields uncertainty.

In contrast, when  the computer double-crossed someone late in the game, the part of the brain  that predictably but efficiently makes decisions out of habit went to work —  presumably to stamp those breaches “Anomalous: Disregard” and keep things  moving.

The studies make  inroads into a relatively unexplored area of knowledge, Reimann said, paving  the way for better understanding the process of trust recovery. It also poses  significant questions for further research.

“These findings  have clear implications for people working together, whether within a company  or in a client-vendor relationship,” Reimann said, “but are the same  neurological systems activated in relationships with material objects or  brands? If you got your first lemon from a car company you’ve been loyal to for  years, would we see the same kind of activities in your brain?”

Findings from  Reimann’s study were published last August in the article "Effect of  Relationship Experience on Trust Recovery Following a Breach” in the journal Proceedings  of the National Academy of Sciences.