"Pledging one's trustworthiness through gifts: An experiment"

Ethnographers have recorded many instances of tokens donated as gifts to attract new partners or strengthen ties to existing ones. 

In their recent publication in 'Judgement and Decision Making', Giuseppe Danese from the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Padova and Luigi Mittone from the University of Trento, study whether gifts are an effective pledge of the donor’s trustworthiness through an experiment modeled on the trust game. 

In the studies with random pairs, trustors send significantly more points when the trustee has sent a token. Subjects in a fixed matching achieve comparable levels of trust and trustworthiness in the studies with and without tokens. 

Read the article here: https://unipd.link/Danese_pledges