The Effects of Social History on Beliefs of Reciprocity in the Trust Game

Trust and reciprocity have often been measured through variations of the trust game. This study evaluates the influence of social norms on the expectations of reciprocity following payment using a variation of the trust game. I build upon Berg\u27s (1995) trust game studying social history by incentivizing the Sender to provide his expectation of the dictator\u27s payback (Di Bartolomeo, 2016). Although Berg does not find social norms to have a statistically significant effect on the trust extended by the Sender, I contest this and isolate an additional quantitative measure of the Sender\u27s expectations. In an incentivized survey, Senders report their beliefs of reciprocity. I determine that social norms do not have a significant result on the Senders\u27 beliefs of the Receivers\u27 reciprocity