Learning whom to trust in repeated social interactions: A developmental perspective

How do people learn to trust or distrust others? In a repeated trust game setting, we investigated the development of trust within repeated interactions. We assessed the development of relation-specific trust across different age groups, ranging from late childhood to young adulthood. The results demonstrated that within relations the older participants showed lower levels of negative reciprocity. Additionally, with increasing age both the anger towards, and punishment of, noncooperative players decreased. Further analyses showed that the differential willingness to punish violations of trust was mediated by feelings of anger. Overall, the data provide initial evidence for the role of emotion regulation in the development of interpersonal trust.