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Updated: Oct 5, 2025

The Collective Trust Game: An Online Group Adaptation of the Trust Game Based on the HoneyComb Paradigm
Published on: October 20, 2022
Different roles of interpersonal trust and institutional trust in COVID-19 pandemic control
Hang Yuan1, Qinyi Long1, Guanglv Huang1
1Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Abstract:
The absence of pharmaceutical interventions made it particularly difficult to mitigate the first outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The current study investigated how interpersonal trust and institutional trust influenced the control process. Trusts and COVID-19 data in 44 countries and 50 US states were analyzed; institutional trust was associated with case fatality rate, and interpersonal trust was associated with control speed. Two independent behavioral experiments showed that institutional trust manipulation increased participants' willingness to complete the COVID-19 test and that interpersonal trust manipulation increased conscious compliance with prevention norms and decreased unnecessary outdoor activities. Agent-based modeling further confirmed these behavioral mechanisms for two types of trust in the COVID-19 control process. New interventions are needed to help countries heighten interpersonal and institutional trust as they continue to battle COVID-19 and other collective threats.
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