Towards a Neurometric-based Construct Validity of Trust

Abstract

Abstract Trust is a nebulous construct central to successful cooperative exchanges and interpersonal relationships. In this study, we introduce a new approach to establishing construct validity of trust using “neurometrics”. We develop a whole-brain multivariate pattern capable of classifying whether new participants will trust a relationship partner in the context of a cooperative interpersonal investment game (n=40) with 90% accuracy and find that it also generalizes to a variant of the same task collected in a different country with 82% accuracy (n=17). Moreover, we establish the convergent and discriminant validity by testing the pattern on thirteen separate datasets (n=1,427) and find that trust is reliably related to beliefs of safety, inversely related to negative affect, but unrelated to reward, cognitive control, social perception, theory of mind, and self-referential processing. Together these results provide support for the notion that the psychological experience of trust contains elements of beliefs of reciprocation and fear of betrayal aversion. Contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence that trust is related to anticipated reward. This work demonstrates how “neurometrics” can be used to characterize the psychological processes associated with brain-based multivariate representations.

Authors 5

1. Pin-Hao Andy Chen

   National Taiwan University

   Affiliation as printed

   Center for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Robotics, National Taiwan University

   Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University

   Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University

   Center for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Robotics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

2. Dominic S. Fareri

   Adelphi University

   Affiliation as printed

   Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University

   Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, 11530

3. Berna Güroğlu Aachen Institute of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Psychology, Leiden University

   Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC)

   Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden, The Netherlands

4. Mauricio R. Delgado

   Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychology, Rutgers University

   Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, 07102

5. Luke J. Chang

   Dartmouth College

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College

   Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755