Market mindset can increase allocations in the trust game through proportional thinking

Prior research has demonstrated that adopting the market mindset hinders interpersonal trust. In the present work, we show that this effect is not universal, as trust can rise when people with the market mindset perceive the situation as resembling market-pricing principles. We start by showing that the Trust Game represents an interaction that people perceive as being more similar to market-pricing relationships rather than to communal-sharing relationships (pilot study; N = 114). In a series of three experiments, we then demonstrate that (a) compared to controls, participants with the market mindset make larger allocations in the Trust Game (Experiment 1; N = 131), (b) this effect is mediated by the motivation to use proportional thinking (preregistered Experiment 2; N = 581), and (c) compared to controls, people with the market mindset are more sensitive to proportions-their allocations in the Trust Game are significantly higher when multiplied by 4 compared to when multiplied by 2 (preregistered Experiment 3; N = 931). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).