Fairness and Trust in Virtual Environments: The Effects of Reputation

Abstract

Reputation supports pro-social behaviors in a variety of social settings and across different ages. When re-encounters are possible, developing a positive reputation can be a valuable asset that will result in better outcomes. However, in real life, cooperative acts are ambiguous and happen in noisy environments in which individuals can have multiple goals, visibility is reduced, and reputation systems may differ. This study examined how reputation within a virtual environment affects fairness in material allocations and trust in information exchange, in a three-actors interaction game in which each player had an incentive to deceive the others. We compared the results of two experimental conditions, one in which informers could be evaluated, and one without reputational opportunities. A reputational system appeared to enhance both trust and fairness even within a virtual environment under anonymous condition. We tested adolescents and adults finding that they were consistently more generous when visibility was increased, but they showed significantly different patterns in resources allocation and information exchange. Male and female participants, across ages, showed other interesting differences. These findings suggest that reputational effects increase fairness and trust even in a noisy, ambiguous and uncertain environment, but this effect is modulated by age and gender.

Personality and Reputation: A Complex Relationship in Virtual Environments

“…For what concerns the offers made by our participants, we observed gender differences, with the males acting fairer than the females. Despite recent works suggesting that women are in general more altruistic than men in the Dictator game [46], our results appeared to be in line with a recent work of Duradoni et al [47] concerning adolescents, in which the presence of a reputational system in a Bargaining Game, induced males to be more generous than females. Thus, one could hypothesize that such differences can be attributed to distinct susceptibility to the reputation of males and females, even if only in allocation tasks.…”

Intrapreneurial Self-Capital and Connectedness to Nature within Organizations

“…For instance, sustainable leadership [57] should reasonably be examined in the future in regard to its relationship with both intrapreneurial self-capital and connectedness to nature. This model could also be studied and integrated within the psychology of harmony as harmonization's framework [58], as well as expanded through the consideration of the peculiar dynamics within virtual environments [59][60][61], which can enhance or hinder sustainable development. Nevertheless, this research project falls within exploratory and correlational studies (i.e., causal relationships are not involved).…”

Intrapreneurial Self-Capital: A Primary Preventive Resource for Twenty-First Century Entrepreneurial Contexts

“…ISC contributes to both HWB and EWB (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2018) as well as other aspects of career development, such as career self-efficacy, career decision making, employability (Di Fabio, 2014; Di Fabio et al., 2019), and innovative behavior (Duradoni and Di Fabio, 2019). Since the entrepreneurial environment is inescapably tied to important, individual psychological needs (i.e., identity, meaning, and personal connection) (Blustein, 2013), the uncertainty and instability ingrained in the current world of work may threaten individuals’ well-being in the workplace (Grawitch and Ballard, 2015; Di Fabio, 2017a; Di Fabio and Kenny, 2018; Duradoni et al., 2018; Giorgi et al., 2019). To successfully handle the current entrepreneurial environment, a broad array of psychological resources and new skills are required.…”