Comparative Analysis of Trust Games between China and America Experimental Research

Most subjects in trust game experiments have been made up of American college students so far. This paper examines the degree of trust and being worth trusting in an experimental trust game with 128 participants of Tongji University in China. The results reveal that Chinese students' behaviors systematically diverge from that predicted by the economic man hypothesis. Moreover, through the comparative study on subjects' behaviors between China and America, we find that Chinese students are more prone to trust others and also more worth trusting. In other words, Chinese students' behaviors deviate more significantly from the economic man hypothesis prediction. This may be explained by the difference between Chinese and American cultures.