Journal of Economic Methodology 13:4, 469–483 December 2006

Coleman’s Hypothesis on trusting

behaviour and a remark on meta-studies
Friedel Bolle and Jessica Kaehler

Abstract Coleman (1990) describes ‘calculative trust’. He states that, in order to

trust, the value of trust has to be larger than the value of mistrust. So if subjects
have (not personally but on average) rational expectations about the trustworthi-
ness of their transaction partners, we should expect the frequency of trust to
increase with the average net profitability of trust. In a meta-study of trust
experiments, Coleman’s Hypothesis could not be confirmed while, in our own
experiment with a wider parameter range, it is supported. We explain this finding
by the parameter choices of experimenters. They choose pay-off parameters
resulting in situations where decisions are ‘difficult’, i.e. to make the alternatives
‘trusting’ and ‘non-trusting’ seem equally profitable. Thus, such experiments are
concentrated on a specific subspace of parameters and are inadequate for certain
meta-studies.

Keywords: trust, reciprocity, experimental economics, meta-studies,

representative design, experimenter bias

1 INTRODUCTION
Cooperation is central for human as well as for many animal societies. In
most cases, however, cooperation needs trust, but trust can be exploited.
That is the central dilemma of cooperation and that is the reason why trust
has received so much attention by social scientists of all faculties. It is not
easy to give a definition of trust which covers all positive meanings (see
Malhotra 2004 for a general discussion) and which separates it from related
terms such as ‘hope’. In trust experiments, however, its meaning is obvious:
it is the expectation of reciprocity.
If someone requires you to trust him or her, the central question is
whether or not trusting is advantageous for you. In economic terms: ‘Does
trust pay?’ The sociologist James Coleman (1990) expressed this criterion in
the following way: In order to trust, the value of trust has to be larger than the
value of mistrust. The value of mistrust is usually equal to an outside option
which can be earned with certainty. The value of trust is an expectation
value computed from the probabilities and values of ‘trust rewarded’ and

Journal of Economic Methodology ISSN 1350-178X print/ISSN 1469-9427 online

# 2006 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/13501780601049061
470 Articles

‘trust exploited’. We will call this criterion ‘Coleman’s Hypothesis’. It is used

in this form for example by Williamson (1993) to illustrate ‘calculative trust’
in a number of examples. In a game theoretic model with incomplete
information about the trustworthiness of one’s partner this would exactly be
the condition for trusting. Many evolutionary models of the possible
development of trust as Güth et al. (1998) and Gintis (2000) are based on
such a comparison. So Coleman’s Hypothesis is practically identical with
the hypothesis ‘trust is calculative’ or ‘trusting behaviour can be described
by (economic) decision theory’.
The alternative to this hypothesis is the statement that trust is partly
or completely non-calculative (Williamson 1993; Nooteboom 2002;
Rosenkranz and Weitzel 2005). According to Nooteboom (2002), the
alternatives are: unreflective trust (neglect of risk due to naivety or cognitive
dissonance), trust based on effect, trust based on routinized behaviour, and
trust based on a default or norm. The existence of effect-based trust seems to
be implied by the experiments of Kosfeld et al. (2005) with oxytocin. Why
this drug enhances trustful behaviour is, however, unclear. Eckel and
Wilson (2004) show that trusting is not influenced by risk attitudes which
should be the case if trust were purely calculative. Guerra and Zizzo (2004)
show that trust may have a ‘self-fulfilling’ component, namely that that
someone is trustworthy simply because he is believed to be trustworthy. This
is a contradiction to Coleman’s Hypothesis only if the truster would not
take into account this effect. The general impression is that there are also
‘non-calculative’ sources of trust (in particular in difficult decision
situations) but there does not seem to exist an investigation where
Coleman’s Hypothesis (calculative trust) is tested directly.
As every econometric study assumes, there are always random influences
(in our case on the valuation and estimation of probabilities) which prevent
us from finding ‘pure’ theoretical regularities. Taking such influences into
account we have to ‘relax’ Coleman’s Hypothesis. We expect that the
frequency of trust increases with the net profitability of trust. We will test
Coleman’s Hypothesis in this weaker form.
Bolle (1995, 1998) found that the net value of trust was not significantly
different from or at least close to zero in most of the twenty-four decision
situations from seven experiments (conducted up to 1995) requiring trust.
Let us call this finding the TME (trust–mistrust equivalence) phenomenon.
Of course, such a computation implicitly assumes rational expectations of
the subjects. In Bolle (1998), it is shown that – on average – subjects’
expectations about reciprocity in trust experiments were exactly met by the
observed frequencies of reciprocity (cooperation). So, the weaker form of
Coleman’s Hypothesis should apply, i.e. the frequency of trust should
increase with the net profitability of trust. But, in this first meta-study, the
frequency of trust seemed to be uncorrelated with the net profitability of
trust.
 Coleman’s Hypothesis on trusting behaviour 471

As a small-scale update of this meta-study we investigated all available

experiments published in 2003. These new experiments show the TME
phenomenon to occur with a similar frequency. Again, frequency and net
profitability of trust seem to be uncorrelated, which seems to contradict
Coleman’s Hypothesis (see Section 2).
The fact that in most experiments the TME phenomenon is found seems
to be miraculous. Fukuyama (1995), Williamson (1993), Coleman (1990)
and many other economists and sociologists emphasize the importance of
trust for the flourishing of a society. This hypothesis seems to be supported
by Knack and Keefer (1997) and other studies. (Slemrod and Katuscak
(2002), however, point out that the connections between personal well-being
and trusting behaviour are more differentiated when trust and trustworthi-
ness are distinguished.) But why should trust be important if these
experiments mirror a reality where the expected net pay-off of trust is
nearly zero? Of course, in ‘real life’ we often have not only one-shot (as in
the experiments) but also repeated interaction and reputation building –
nonetheless sometimes we also have to trust a stranger, for example when
buying a used car, signing an insurance contract, or simply asking for the
way.
Perhaps, the first thought is that the TME phenomenon can be explained
in the framework of an evolutionary model. Meanwhile, there are a number
of models on the evolution of trustworthiness and trust (Güth et al. 1998;
Güth and Ockenfels 1999; Gintis 2000; Berninghaus et al. 2002). Some of
these show that the TME phenomenon can occur in a world of constant
rewards (identical interactions), but they do not imply that it holds when
rewards are different in every interaction. Anderhub et al. (2002) investigate
theoretically and experimentally a repeated (reputation) game of trust where
the mixed equilibrium strategies require the TME phenomenon. But this
cannot explain TME in one-shot games either. In Bolle and Kaehler (2003),
a general evolutionary model is investigated for the question whether the
TME phenomenon could be evolutionary stable. They find that it is a non-
generic case, i.e. it can occur only for certain pay-off structures.
There is, however, another explanation of the TME phenomenon, namely
that it is an artificial finding produced by experimenters who want to pose
their subjects in ‘difficult’ situations. This explanation requires experimen-
ters, first, to have rational expectations about the results of their
experiments and, second, a preference for experiments where the TME
phenomenon occurs. Evidence for this hypothesis is reported in Bolle and
Kaehler (2003). Here, we want to concentrate on the question ‘Coleman’s
Hypothesis vs TME’.
We conducted a game of trust experiment as in Figure 1 with seven
different treatments, namely, b522, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Game theory as well
common sense tells us that an egoistical player B (the trustee) would decide a
(exploitation) if b,8 and k (cooperation) if b.8. A ‘thankful’ player B
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Figure 1 The decision structure in the game of trust

might even cooperate if 4,b,8. Practically all trust experiments in the

literature concentrate on this region, i.e. in all experiments we find that B’s
pay-off after cooperation lies between his ‘exploitation’ pay-off and what he
would have got under the outside option. Not even the limits of this region
(in one case b54 and b58) are investigated. In our experiment, where only
one b is in this ‘normal region’ chosen in trust game experiments, the result
was that Coleman’s Hypothesis is clearly supported, i.e. we found a strong
correlation between the net profitability and the frequency of trust. The
TME phenomenon is restricted to the only parameter in the ‘normal region’
b56 (see Section 2 below).
In recent years, the number of empirical and experimental studies have
increased exponentially. As many of these studies are similar, meta-analyses
of the data seem to be promising. In medicine, such meta-analyses have a
longer tradition, but in experimental economics also they have become more
and more frequent. Examples are Croson and Marks (2000) for threshold
public goods experiments, Oosterbeek et al. (2004) for ultimatum experi-
ments, and Murphy et al. (2005) for stated preference evaluation. Contrary
to overview articles, meta-analyses comprehend the data of many studies,
usually in order to arrive at more reliable regularities than reported by single
studies. Another goal of meta-studies is to identify influential variables
which cannot be identified in single studies because of missing variation of
the variables (e.g. cultural influences or a student/non-student differentia-
tion). In our small-scale meta-study presented below the possible connection
between the profitability and the frequency of trust is examined. In this
paper, we will show that such a meta-study is misleading. This need not
(completely) exclude the usefulness of trust experiments for meta-studies
which are directed to variances of the environment or the decision makers.
Examples which might be extended to meta-studies are those tasting cultural
influences (Willinger et al. 2003 for German, French and American
 Coleman’s Hypothesis on trusting behaviour 473

students) or comparing students’ and non-students’ behaviour (for CEO

behaviour see Fehr and List 2004) or gender studies (Chaudhuri and
Gangadharan 2002). Note, however, that we find differences of behaviour,
say, between men and women, only for certain parameter values (close to
b56 in Figure 1). We cannot even be sure that we find the same regularities
if the source of thankfulness is decreased (b close to 4) or if temptation is
diminished (b close to 8). In particular, we should be extremely cautious
with respect to meta-studies which build on the variance of such parameter
values. Lepper et al. (1999) discuss a number of further influences which
may make meta-analyses misleading. In the following, we will argue that
meta-studies of trust experiments lack representativeness of situations
(Brunswik 1956; Hogarth 2005).
In this paper, we concentrate on the Coleman Hypothesis and why it
seems to be rejected by meta-studies. Further aspects of trusting behaviour
are discussed in Bolle (1998), Malhotra (2004) and many other studies.
In Section 2, we compare the net profitability and the frequency of trust
for all available trust experiments published in 2003. In Section 3 the results
of our own trust experiment are reported. Section 4 is the conclusion.

2 TRUST EXPERIMENTS OF 2003: IS THERE STILL A TME

PHENOMENON?
Two types of experiments are investigated for the existence of the TME
phenomenon, the one based on the Trust Game, the other on the Investment
(Gift Exchange) Game. In the following, we describe how to compute the
net profitabilities of trust in these experiments from the literature. Note that
the respective authors do not provide us with this information.
In the Trust Game, the first mover (truster) has only two choices, namely
choosing an outside option n or choosing to trust v. If the truster had chosen
v, the second mover (the trustee) has to decide between cooperation k or
exploitation a (see Figure 1 above). Take as an example the experiment by
McCabe et al. (2003) where seventeen of twenty-seven truster subjects
decided v and eleven of seventeen trustee subjects decided k. While the
observed frequency of trust (17/27~ ^ 63 per cent) is evident, the net value of
trust is not. Taking into account the income of the truster in the three
different situations ($20 outside option, $15 if exploited, $25 after
cooperation) and a probability of 11/17 for cooperation (6/17 for
exploitation) we get a ‘normalized net value of trust’5percentage added
to the outside option of 0.07 (7 per cent). Under the assumption of a
binominal distribution the 90 per cent confidence interval for p5frequency
of cooperation is [0.24, 0.85] which is transformed in a 90 per cent interval of
net values of trust of [20.04, 0.17]. The same procedure is used to determine
90 per cent intervals of net values of trust for the experiments of Bohnet and
Zeckhauser (2003) and Bacharach et al. (2003). In the three treatments of
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Bacharach et al. (2003) the outside option was (formally) valued zero or
negative. In these cases we regard the equivalent game where the initial
endowment was added to all pay-offs.
In the Investment Game, the truster gets an initial endowment (often $10
or J10) which he can fully or partially send to the trustee. The experimenter
doubles or triples this ‘investment’ and the trustee can send back as much as
she likes. In the original Berg et al. (1995) study as well as in many
replications it turned out that the amount sent back is proportional to the
amount received. In Burks et al. (2003), a rather small tendency towards an
increasing share is reported; in the Gift Exchange Game of Fehr et al. (2005)
(see Table 1 below) we see the contrary. As, however, the typical sample
sizes (fifteen to fifty subjects) do not allow differentiation between classes of
amounts sent, we use the proportionality result to determine (from all data)
the average revenue from $1 invested. In Fehr and Rockenbach’s (2003)
‘Trust condition’ the average fraction of investment returned was 1.25.
Under the assumption of a normal distribution of return rates, the 90 per
cent confidence interval is [0.99, 1.51] which results in a normalized net
value of trust in the interval [0, 0.5]. What is the ‘frequency of trust’ in such a
game? One indicator is the frequency of positive investments (close to 100
per cent in all treatments). The other indicator which we preferred and used
in Figure 1 is the average fraction of the endowment which is invested. The
studies by Burk et al. (2003) and Willinger et al. (2003) are treated similarly;
the only difference is that we relied on the regression data given in those
studies in order to determine the 90 per cent intervals of net profitabilities.
In Figure 2, we found the net value from trust to be not significantly
different from zero in six of thirteen cases. These results are comparable
with those of Bolle (1995) where the TME phenomenon was observed in
about half of the cases. In addition, neither in Figure 1 nor in the respective
figure in Bolle (1995) does the net value x seem to have a positive influence
on the frequency of trust y. The regression of the frequency of trust on the
midpoint of intervals in Figure 1 is y50.55 + 0.27x with an adjusted,
R250.09 and an insignificant coefficient of x (p50.17). So, Coleman’s
Hypothesis which would imply a positive correlation between the net value
of trust and the frequency of trust seems to be rejected. Note that across the

Table 1 Does it pay to trust in the gift exchange game?

Investment (Euro) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average net return 3.0 2.2 3.8 4.4. 4.0 3.7 1.5 1.0 0.6 1.5 21.0*
Standard deviation 5.7 2.2 4.5 5.3 2.2 4.1 5.4 5.7 4.6 6.3 7.4
N 19 11 16 15 17 38 16 11 13 12 45
Notes: Net return5return minus investment. * indicates a significant difference (5 per
cent level) to the return from an investment of 0. Source: Fehr et al. (2003),
supplemented by data received from the authors, and own computations.
 Coleman’s Hypothesis on trusting behaviour 475

Figure 2 Value of trust vs frequency of trust More exactly: 90 per cent confidence
intervals of normalized net value from trust5(reward from trust minus reward from
mistrust)/reward from mistrust vs frequency of trust in thirteen decision situations
from six experiments first published in 2003. BZ: Bohnet and Zeckhauser (2003);
BGZ: Bacharach et al. (2003, Working Paper 2003); MRS: McCabe et al. (2003); FR:
Fehr and Rockenbach (2003); WKLU: Willinger et al. (2003); BCV: Burks et al.
(2003).

experiments there are no common additional descriptive variables commu-

nicated. So, it is not possible to correct for other influences before testing
Coleman’s Hypothesis.
The Gift Exchange Game by Fehr et al. (2003) differs from the other
Investment Games by the attribute that both players are endowed with J10
and that the amount sent as well as the amount sent back are doubled by the
experimenter. Above all, however, it differs because of the large number of
subjects (N5441). So, we could analyse it for different classes of investments
(see Table 1) and investigate the TME phenomenon without the additional
hypothesis of a constant fraction of the investment returned. Of course, in
this detailed analysis, there is no ‘amount of trust’ measurable. It is
interesting to note that even in the case of zero investment there is an
average return of 3.0. Thus we have to conclude that the motive for returns
may also be ‘kindness’ or, particularly in the case of an investment of zero,
the motive to make the other one ashamed. TME requires that the average
return of a positive investment is not significantly different from the average
return of investing nothing. The fact that there is only one significant
difference in Table 1 supports TME.

3 THE GAME OF TRUST EXPERIMENT WITH A WIDER

PARAMETER RANGE
The experiment took place in the computer laboratory of the Viadrina
University in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, where ten separate PCs were
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available. The subjects were first year economics or business students who
communicated their interest (personally, per email, or on an open list) to
participate in ‘well-paid’ economic experiments and who were invited
randomly to certain experimental sessions. Seven groups of eleven students
were invited; if they all showed up or if nine subjects showed up the last to
arrive was sent home with J5 consolation fee. The experiment was carried
out with six groups of ten subjects, and with one group of eight subjects. The
subjects were placed randomly at the PCs: four or five took the role of A,
four or five the role of B. They kept these roles during all experiments.
They received verbal instructions for the first treatment. After that
written descriptions of the game were distributed (see Appendix), five
rounds of Treatment 1 (with a certain b-value indicated on the monitor)
were played where every A played once (if there were ten subjects) with
every B. The order was random and As and Bs did not know who their
respective partner was. All As and Bs made their decision at the same time,
i.e. we used the strategy method. The B-subjects were required to decide as if
A had chosen v.
After the five rounds of Treatment 1, the next treatment started with a
new b-value, etc. The seven parameter values b were used in the order 0, 8, 4,
22, 10, 2, 6 and in the six cyclic permutations of this order. The position of a
treatment with a certain b-value did not turn out to be crucial (see Bolle and
Kaehler 2003). In Table 2, the 90 per cent confidence intervals are given on
which also Figure 3 depends. These intervals are computed from the seven
average frequencies of trust and cooperation in the seven groups of subjects
under the assumption of a normal distribution. Only these seven values can
count as really independent observations.

Table 2 Average percentages of trust and cooperation and 90 per cent confidence
intervals under the assumption of a normal distribution on the basis of seven
observations (the averages of the seven groups of subjects)
Trust
B 22 0 2 4 6 8 10
mean (%) 11.1 13.1 9.9 19.6 32.0 88.0 95.4
upper limit (%) 16.4 20.6 14.0 26.4 38.9 93.3 99.7
lower limit (%) 5.9 5.7 5.8 13.1 25.1 82.7 91.1

Cooperation
b 22 0 2 4 6 8 10
mean (%) 1.7 0.6 3.7 16.7 37.0 78.1 93.7
upper limit (%) 3.5 1.4 6.4 27.0 50.8 83.3 99.3
lower limit (%) 0 0 1.0 6.4 23.2 73.0 88.1
Note: A lower limit of 0 in the table means that the estimated value is negative.
 Coleman’s Hypothesis on trusting behaviour 477

Let us compare, in Figure 3, the expected normalized net reward after

trust with the frequency of trust, just as in Figure 2. In Figure 3, the 90 per
cent confidence intervals are given which have been calculated from the
upper and lower values in Table 2. We find the TME phenomenon only for
b56. The regression of the frequency of trust y on the midpoints of the
intervals x results in y523.0 + 15,2x with an adjusted R250.98 and a highly
significant coefficient of x (p51025).
In our experiment which covers a large parameter region, we find the
TME phenomenon based on 90 per cent confidence intervals in one of
seven, i.e. in 14 per cent of the cases. In Figure 2 and Table 1 which resulted
from experiments conducted with only one parameter we found this in 46
per cent and 90 per cent of the cases. Of course, the percentages are also
dependent on the number of subjects and/or the number of experimental
sessions. Also the assumptions on statistical independence play a role. So,
how often we find the TME phenomenon is crucially influenced by the
average size of experiments and by assumptions underlying statistical tests.
But, independent of statistical significance, the fact remains that many net
profitabilities are close to zero and that the amount of trust is neither close
to zero nor close to 100 per cent. In addition, Figure 2 suggests no relation
between the net value of trust and the frequency of trust (Coleman’s
Hypothesis rejected) while Figure 3 does (Coleman’s Hypothesis supported).
Let us point out one other property of Figure 3: the 90 per cent intervals
are small for extreme b (‘easy’ decisions), they are large only for the medium
b54 and b56.

Figure 3 The 90 per cent interval of normalized net profitability of trust (5reward
from trust minus reward from mistrust/reward from mistrust) and the frequency of
trust (calculated from Table 2). The intervals belong (from the left to the right side)
to b522, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.
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4 CONCLUSION
The TME phenomenon is apparently artificial. Theoretically, it is supported
by evolutionary investigations which assume a uniform environment.
Empirically, it holds only in a very small region of parameter values. But
experimenters often choose just these values and, thus, a meta-study as
described in Figure 2 would violate Brunswik’s (1956) requirement of
representativeness. ‘… sampling should take place on two dimensions. One
involves the participants; the other concerns the situations or tasks with
which the participants are confronted. Valid interferences can only be
achieved by sampling in a representative manner on both dimensions’
(Hogarth 2005: 254). It does not seem that trust experiments, neither in a
single experimenter’s experiment nor in the set of experiments published, are
selected by ‘representative sampling’. Note that this remark does not imply
any criticism of single experiments or researchers. It only points out that
there are conflicting goals when experiments are chosen.
Are there other phenomena due to experimenters’ selection of parameters
or treatments? Gigerenzer et al. (1991: 526) show that the overconfidence
phenomenon is determined by the selection of the treatment: ‘… changes in
the task … can make the two stable effects reported in the literature –
overconfidence and the hard-easy effect – emerge, disappear, and invert at
will’. Juslin (1994) explicitly assumes that the overconfidence phenomenon
can be explained by such a selection effect. With respect to the ‘hard-easy-
effect’ Juslin et al. (2000: 393) conclude: ‘… there is a difference between
selected and representative item samples …’. Braga (2003) asks whether
preference reversal is not more than a stochastic phenomenon. Starmer
(2003) points out the ‘instability’ of many ‘paradoxa’. In the last case, even
small experimenter biases may have significant effects. Foster (2000) shows
that experimenters have rational expectations concerning the outcome of
word recognition experiments and speculate whether this might be the
source of a bias. Krueger and Funder (2004) complain about researchers’
concentration on ‘negative results’ in social psychology. This is a
fundamental criticism which accuses the mainstream research strategies of
supporting ‘frequently erroneous imputations of errors, finding of mutually
contradictory errors, incoherent interpretations of error, an inability to
explain the sources of behavioural or cognitive achievement, and the
inhibition of generalised theory’ (Krueger and Funder 2004: abstract).
A reason to pose subjects in critical (TME) situations is the investigation
of different treatments. The many replications of the Berg et al. (1995)
Investment Game, for example, are often accompanied by variations of the
frame or by additional behavioural options. It is plausible that the effect of
such variations could be most easily detected in critical situations where
subjects are expected to show medium values of trust. This is certainly a
reasonable strategy, but it makes meta-studies of trust experiments look like
 Coleman’s Hypothesis on trusting behaviour 479

Figure 1. But perhaps it might still be possible to carry out meta-studies with
other goals, for example with respect to the question whether men or women
are more trustworthy or students or CEOs are more trustful. Of course, such
a study would make sense but we should be aware that the result is restricted
to certain ‘medium’ situations, in the language of our experiment the
situation b56. Gender effects in the limiting case b54 (no reason for
thankfulness) may be different as well as in the limiting case b58 (no
exploitative incentives). In the region b,4 the trustee even has a reason for
revenge – but still an efficiency-oriented person (who wants to maximize the
sum of pay-offs) may cooperate. Are there more efficiency-oriented men or
women? We can hardly deduce this from published trust experiments.
A ‘closer look’ often indicates irrational or inconsistent behaviour
(however this is defined) in critical situations. When preferences are ‘close
to indifference’, intransitivity of choices dependent on irrelevant alternatives
(Allais 1953; Tyska 1983) might easily occur. This should not make us
believe that human behaviour is, in general, irrational or of severely
bounded rationality. If such a conclusion is drawn only from experiments in
‘critical situations’ (where decisions are extremely difficult as the large 90 per
cent confidence intervals in Figure 3 show) then the selection bias is severely
misleading. This remark should not be misunderstood. We know that there
are systematic deviations from utility maximization. We only want to say
that a habit of placing subjects in difficult situations may overemphasize
these deviations.
The relevance of observed irrationalities is discussed, for example, in
Selten (1990) and Camerer (1995). People use heuristics and there is a
tendency (not more!) that by evolutionary forces these heuristics are
optimized so that ‘on average’ or ‘in principle’ human decisions are rational
– though there are systematic errors.
In 1967, Peterson and Beach wrote a review of research on intuitive
statistical judgement and concluded that people obeyed normative laws
rather well. Psychologists focused on judgement errors in the 1970s
because they thought judgement errors might reveal how people generally
make judgements, just as optical illusions tell us about perception and
forgetting tells us about memory. (Camerer 1995: 588)
We conclude that experimenters select trust experiments with the view
that subjects’ decisions should be difficult. It makes sense for some
experimental purposes but it also bears three potential pitfalls: first,
overlooking important phenomena (behaviour according to the Coleman
hypothesis); second, the danger of detecting phenomena which cannot be
generalized but hardly ever occur in ‘real’ situations (the TME phenom-
enon); and third, the danger of a false impression of a widespread lack of
rationality in human decisions. We neither state nor exclude a general
tendency of this kind in economic experiments. We only present an
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argument for its existence which may be confirmed or otherwise by further

investigations.
Note also that this paper should not be misunderstood as an accusation
against experimenters who may have had good reasons in each of their
experiments to choose parameter values under which the TME phenomenon
occurs. But our study casts some doubt on the usage of meta-studies. As
experimenters often select their experimental parameters so that choices are
particularly difficult the three potential pitfalls above are always present.

Friedel Bolle and Jessica Kaehler

Europa Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt
bolle@euv-frankfurt-o.de

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the authors of Fehr et al. (2003) as well as Fehr and
Rockenbach (2003) for providing us with detailed data of their experiments.
Yves Breitmoser helped with the programming of the experiment. The
software used was z-tree by Urs Fischbacher (see www.iew.unizh.ch/ztree/
index.php).

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 Coleman’s Hypothesis on trusting behaviour 483

APPENDIX

WRITTEN DESCRIPTION OF EXPERIMENT

(English translation)
Please imagine the following situation:
1.) Person A can choose between actions n or v.
2. a) If A chooses n then the relation between A and B is terminated. Both
get 4 units of money (GE).
2. b) If A chooses action v then B can choose between k or a.
k’s consequence is: 12 GE for A, b GE for B
a’s consequence is: 22 GE for A, 8 GE for B
Presentation as a game tree: