We distrust those who are mean with money: Study

London: We distrust people who are mean with their money, according to a new study.

In the study, researchers from the University of Oxford and the European University Institute, Italy, asked participants who had no face-to-face contact to play a series of interactive games.

They had to make decisions about whom to trust in their dealings with other players, based on information they were given on the level of these other players' generosity in previous games.

The experiments found that participants who had been mean with their money were trusted less, and indeed were more likely to be untrustworthy.

The experiments involved a total of 265 Oxford University students. First, participants played the Dictator Game, where they were put into pairs, and in each pair one was given 8 pounds.

These players could then choose the 'mean' option of giving 1 pound or the 'generous' option of giving 3.50 pounds to the other player.

In the second stage of the experiment, participants played the Trust Game. In this game, the players were again put into pairs but with a different partner. Then, one player could first decide whether to keep or send money to their partner.

Sending the money would multiply the amount, but now their partner could either send a larger share back in return, or simply pocket the money.

However, before the first player decided whether to send the money, he or she received information about what the other player had done in the Dictator Game. The players could truthfully reveal, hide or lie about whether they had been generous or mean.

Some 65 per cent of participants in the Trust Game sent money to those who had already shown generosity in the earlier game. Only 29 per cent of players sent money to partners after learning those partners had been mean or had remained silent about what they did in the earlier Dictator Game.

While the researchers informed some players about the rules of the Trust Game before they played the Dictator Game, others were kept in the dark. This allowed the researchers to assess whether players might be strategic in choosing to be generous in the first game.

The researchers found that past displays of generosity are widely regarded as a key attribute when we are looking for indicators of trustworthiness and other information about a person's reputation is not available.

The experiment also demonstrates how players recognised the usefulness of displaying past generosity. Around 60 per cent of players who had been mean in the first game and got a chance to say it lied about their meanness in the later game, saying that they had been generous.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.