Trust, conflict, and cooperation: A meta-analysis.

Many theories of trust emphasize that trust is most relevant to behavior in situations involving a conflict of interests. However, it is not clear how trust relates to behavior across situations that differ in the degree of conflicting interest: Does trust matter more when the conflict of interest is small or large? According to an interdependence perspective, trust becomes an especially important determinant of behavior in situations involving larger, compared to smaller, degrees of conflicting interests. To examine this perspective, we conducted a meta-analysis involving 212 effect sizes on the relation between trust (both state and dispositional trust in others) and cooperation in social dilemmas-situations…