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Trust is essential for a secure and flourishing social life, but many economic and philosophical approaches argue that rational people should never extend it, in particular to strangers they will never encounter again. Emerging data on the trust game, a laboratory economic exchange, suggests that people trust strangers excessively (i.e., far more than their tolerance for risk and cynical views of their peers should allow). What produces this puzzling "excess" of trust? We argue that people trust due to a norm mandating that they show respect for the other person's character, presuming the other person has sufficient integrity and goodwill even if they do not believe it privately. Six studies provided converging evidence that decisions to trust follow the logic of norms. Trusting others is what people think they should do, and the emotions associated with fulfilling a social duty or responsibility (e.g., guilt, anxiety) account for at least a significant proportion of the excessive trust observed. Regarding the specific norm in play, trust rates collapse when respect for the other person's character is eliminated as an issue.

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No abstract

Altruistic punishment refers to the phenomenon that humans invest their own resources to redress norm violations without self‐interest involved. We address the question of who will intervene in situations that allow for altruistic punishment. We suggest that individual differences in a genuine concern for justice, as reflected by the personality trait of justice sensitivity, determine the experience of moral emotions in the face of injustice, which in turn trigger altruistic punishment. Results of two studies support the proposed mediation effect for other‐regarding justice sensitivity, even though an opportunity for compensation of the victim (Study 2) was offered as an alternative to punishment (Study 1). Furthermore, the mediation effect was observed when moral outrage was measured by means of quantified open statements (Study 1) and self‐report scales using discrete emotions (Study 2). The findings help to explain the psychological mechanisms underlying engagement in costly social sanctioning of norm violations.