Who Do You Trust?

By Dawn Dorsey

Beware of strangers. Don’t judge a book by its cover. We repeat these timeworn adages without even thinking, but new research into the snap judgments people make in deciding whether to trust strangers shows people are willing to judge a book by its cover, even though, from a strategic standpoint, they should not.

Trust is a key concept in political science, and much research has delved into what makes people trust one another. The fact is, even though our mothers advised us otherwise, we are not cautious of strangers, and several previous studies have shown a considerable level of trust between strangers. As far as judging a book by its cover, research shows race has some bearing on trust, but what about the attractiveness of the stranger?

“We were interested in whether people infer something about their counterpart based solely on a surface judgment, and whether these judgments are correct,” says Rick Wilson, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Political Science and professor of psychology and statistics at Rice University. Wilson is co-author, with Catherine Eckel, professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas, of a new study titled “Judging a Book by Its Cover: Beauty and Expectations in the Trust Game.” This led the researchers to the seemingly noncredible but easy to observe and difficult to mimic aspect of people–their attractiveness.

Prior research has shown that people attribute a variety of positive characteristics to attractive people, including intelligence, competence, and leadership skills. It appears attractiveness pays in the marketplace, and this has been referred to as the “beauty premium.” As far back as the famous televised “dark shadow” debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, political scientists have noted a beauty premium for political candidates.

To find if people rely on attractiveness as a way to decide whether to trust strangers and if attractive people gain from being trusted, the researchers recruited a total of 206 students from Virginia Tech, Rice University, and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University to participate in the experiment. A little more than half were males, and 94 percent were between the ages of 18 and 22. The researchers took care to select an ethnically diverse group. They then used a two-part experiment to measure trust and attractiveness. In the first part, subjects were photographed and took part in a series of “trust games.” In the second part, another group of subjects evaluated the photographs for attractiveness.

In the trust games, on average, the attractive people fared best, and they tended to reciprocate that trust. “We found that attractive subjects gain a beauty premium in that they are trusted at higher rates,” Wilson says. However, the participants also had higher expectations of attractive people. “Attractive people were penalized more heavily than less attractive people when expectations were dashed,” Wilson says, “setting up a ‘beauty penalty.’”

What impact might these findings have on the larger picture of society? In today’s environment of visual media, people often make snap decisions based on brief sightings. This research confirms what has been found in other studies in political science: attractiveness matters when people are evaluating candidates. “Also, attractive people may be more successful in acquiring social capital because they are trusted in the initial exchange,” Wilson notes. “Whether or not they are more productive doesn’t seem to matter—the fact is, they get an initial advantage.”

The reasons we are so attentive to attractiveness probably are rooted in centuries past. “It may be embedded as part of our cognitive apparatus,” Wilson says. “There are evolutionary reasons why humans might be attentive to attractiveness, including that, historically, it signaled good genes, substantial parental investment, or status.”