Swift neighbors and persistent strangers: A cross-cultural investigation of trust and reciprocity in social exchange

In four countries, levels of trust and reciprocity in direct-reciprocal exchange are compared with those in network-generalized exchanges among experimentally manipulated groups' members (neighbors) or random experimental participants (strangers). Results show that cooperation decreases as social distance increases; and, that identical network-generalized exchanges generate different amounts of trusting behavior due solely to manipulated social identity between the actors. This study demonstrates the interaction of culture and social identity on the propensity to trust and reciprocate and also reveals differing relationships between trust and reciprocation in each of the four countries, bringing into question the theoretical relationship between these cooperative behaviors.