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Updated: May 8, 2026
06:18
The Collective Trust Game: An Online Group Adaptation of the Trust Game Based on the HoneyComb Paradigm
Published on: October 20, 2022
Money and trust among strangers.
Gabriele Camera1, Marco Casari, Maria Bigoni
1Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866.
Summary
Money is behaviorally essential for societal cooperation. Introducing tokens as money stabilized cooperation in large groups by fostering trust among strangers, overcoming trust deficits that hinder group functioning.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral Economics
- Sociology
- Evolutionary Game Theory
Background:
- Modern society relies on cooperation among strangers.
- Trust is crucial for sustained cooperation, but erodes in larger groups.
- Standard economic theories do not fully capture the behavioral underpinnings of cooperation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the behavioral necessity of money in facilitating cooperation.
- To examine how group size impacts cooperation without and with a medium of exchange.
- To develop an evolutionary model explaining the role of money in heterogeneous societies.
Main Methods:
- An experiment involving repeated interactions where subjects could help anonymous, changing counterparts.
- Introduction of intrinsically worthless tokens that endogenously became a medium of exchange (money).
- Analysis of cooperation levels across different group sizes and conditions (with and without tokens).
- Development of an evolutionary model to explain the observed behavioral dynamics.
Main Results:
- Cooperation declined significantly as group size increased in the absence of tokens.
- The introduction of tokens as money stabilized cooperation, maintaining high levels regardless of group size.
- Decentralized enforcement of social norms for cooperation was possible but demanding, especially in large groups.
- Heterogeneous behavior led to cooperation collapse without tokens, but tokens promoted evolutionarily stable cooperation.
Conclusions:
- Lack of trust among strangers makes money behaviorally essential for societal functioning.
- Money facilitates cooperation by acting as a trust-enforcing mechanism in large, anonymous groups.
- The use of tokens (money) is evolutionarily advantageous in societies with heterogeneous behaviors.
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