The evolution of trust and trustworthiness
Aanjaneya Kumar, Valerio Capraro, Matjaz Perc

TL;DR
This paper investigates how trust and trustworthiness evolve across different network structures using the trust game, revealing that network topology generally has limited impact, with specific conditions allowing trust to develop independently of trustworthiness.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive analysis of trust and trustworthiness evolution across various network types, highlighting unique conditions in scale-free networks where trust can evolve without trustworthiness.
Findings
Trust rarely evolves in well-mixed, lattice, and random networks.
Trustworthiness can evolve depending on game parameters and dynamics.
Scale-free networks can support the evolution of trust independently of trustworthiness.
Abstract
Trust and trustworthiness form the basis for continued social and economic interactions, and they are also fundamental for cooperation, fairness, honesty, and indeed for many other forms of prosocial and moral behavior. However, trust entails risks, and building a trustworthy reputation requires effort. So how did trust and trustworthiness evolve, and under which conditions do they thrive? To find answers, we operationalize trust and trustworthiness using the trust game with the trustor's investment and the trustee's return of the investment as the two key parameters. We study this game on different networks, including the complete network, random and scale-free networks, and in the well-mixed limit. We show that in all but one case the network structure has little effect on the evolution of trust and trustworthiness. Specifically, for well-mixed populations, lattices, random and…
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