Can I Trust You?

Abstract

Adolescence is an important developmental period for learning who can and cannot be trusted, and how to adapt one’s trust behavior in response to others’ reciprocal behavior. The main objective of this thesis was to create more insight into the development of adolescent trust behavior and to explain individual differences in trust behavior and the related neural activity. The development of initial trust behavior and the development of adaptive trust behavior were investigated. Furthermore, in the chapters described in this thesis, factors within the individual, e.g., gender, personality traits, symptoms of psychopathology, and perspective-taking abilities, and factors from one’s social environment, e.g., social embeddedness within social networks, were used to predict individual differences in trust behavior. Collectively, the results presented in this thesis indicate that adolescence is an important developmental period for trust behavior. First, increased levels of initial trust behavior were found throughout adolescence. Second, adolescents showed stronger adaptive trust behavior with age when interacting with untrustworthy others, and they showed age-related increases in average trust behavior when the partner behaved in a trustworthy manner. This suggests that learning who can be trusted and responding adaptively to the partner develops throughout adolescence. Adaptive trust behavior was also elicited by contextual factors, as adolescents showed they were able to overcome incorrect prior expectations about the partner and adjust their trust behavior in response to the partner’s actual behavior. The increased dlPFC and superior parietal gyrus activity that was found when interacting with this partner might tentatively suggest that cognitive control processes underlie these adaptive trust behavior processes. Furthermore, the results of this thesis indicated no support for a relationship between trust behavior and personality traits, symptoms of psychopathology, and perspective-taking abilities. The results did show that individual differences in adolescent trust behavior and the related neural activity can be explained by gender and the position within a social network. Boys showed a stronger developmental increase in initial trust behavior throughout adolescence compared to girls. Furthermore, the centrality of one´s social network position was positively related to levels of initial trust and to caudate activity, tentatively indicating increased expectancy violation when interacting with untrustworthy others.

Development of the attitude toward mediation scale

“…Additionally, analysis of the internal consistency reliability suggested that separately examining the subscale scores, as a bifactor model would allow, would be of little added value, as there was only little unique variance attributable to these subscales when taking into account the attitude factor. Therefore, in line with theoretical parallels (Sijtsma, 2022) between the second-order model (i.e., distinct but strongly interrelated first-order factors accounted for by a broader second-order factor; Brown, 2006) and the attitude conceptualization (i.e., attitude toward mediation accounting for the relations between emotion, cognition, and motivation toward mediation; Triandis, 1971), findings offered the strongest support for a second-order factor structure of the instrument. Specifically, these findings suggest the ability to interpret the AMS average score as a single scale, with subscales included only to capture and reflect the multidimensionality of the attitude construct.…”

“…Development of the AMS was theory-driven (Sijtsma, 2022), including items based on integration of the attitude (e.g., Albarracín & Shavitt, 2018;Triandis, 1971) and mediation literature (e.g., Baitar et al, 2016;Emery et al, 2005;Poitras, 2010;Wall & Dunne, 2012), adaptation of established attitude measures (e.g., Di Lorenzo et al, 2020;Gonzalez et al, 2011;Hogan et al, 1983), and revision of items previously used to measure attitude toward mediation in legal professionals (Wijnant, 2018). Based on data collected in 1220 Flemish adults, results provided initial support for the reliability and construct validity of the newly developed AMS.…”