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Rage Against the Machine or Humans?

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Abstract

We examine how betrayal aversion and ambiguity attitudes influence trust. To disentangle these effects, we use a Trust game and manipulate trustors’ perception of being the intentional recipients of trustees’ betrayal by varying the nature of the latter: a human or a machine that replicates human choices in probability. After confirming that this manipulation does not affect ambiguity attitudes or beliefs about others’ behavior, we find that both factors significantly influence trust. Nonetheless, even when controlling for these attitudes and beliefs, participants exhibit lower trust in humans than in machine. Furthermore, using Noldus’ FaceReader technology to measure emotions during trustors’ decision-making process, we find that participants express greater anger toward human trustees. Our results indicate that both betrayal aversion and ambiguity attitudes play important roles in shaping trust decisions.

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  • Luca Delle Foglie & Stefano Papa & Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2025. "Rage Against the Machine or Humans?," CEIS Research Paper 593, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 21 Feb 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:593
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ambiguity attitudes; Anger; Betrayal cost; Emotions; FaceReader; Trust game;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

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