Trust What I Say: Increasing Cooperation by Suggesting Others are Trustworthy

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of a previously published work on cooperation and trust by replicating the original study and adding an additional condition. Participants listened to one of three audio files designed to encourage them to trust others, encourage them to trust themselves, or a control condition designed to encourage relaxation, and then played 40 rounds of the Stag Hunt game post-intervention. The total number of times the participant played stag was recorded. The results revealed that the audio condition did influence cooperation in the Stag Hunt Game. Those participants in the condition designed to influence them to trust others were statistically more likely to cooperate than either other condition. Neither the trust self-condition participants nor the control condition participants played differently from chance.