To trust or not to trust: social decision-making in post-institutionalized, internationally adopted youth

Abstract

Chronic parental maltreatment has been associated with lower levels of interpersonal trust, and depriving environments have been shown to predict short-sighted, risk-averse decision-making. The present study examined whether a circumscribed period of adverse care occurring only early in life was associated with biases in trust behavior. Fifty-three post-institutionalized (PI) youth, adopted internationally on average by 1 year of age, and 33 never-institutionalized, non-adopted youth (M_age = 12.9 years) played a trust game. Participants decided whether or not to share coins with a different anonymous peer in each trial with the potential to receive a larger number of coins in return. Trials were presented in blocks that varied in the degree to which the peers behaved in a trustworthy (reciprocal) or untrustworthy (non-reciprocal) manner. A comparison condition consisted of a computerized lottery with the same choices and probabilistic risk as the peer trials. Non-adopted comparison youth showed a tendency to share more with peers than to invest in the lottery and tended to maintain their level of sharing across trials despite experiencing trials in which peers failed to reciprocate. In contrast, PI children, particularly those who were adopted over 1 year of age, shared less with peers than they invested in the lottery and quickly adapted their sharing behavior to peers' responses. These results suggest that PI youth were more mistrusting, more sensitive to both defection and reciprocation, and potentially more accurate in their trusting decisions than comparison youth. Results support the presence of a sensitive period for the development of trust in others, whereby conditions early in life may set long-term biases in decision-making.

Figure 1

Representations of decision trees shown in Peer (a) and Lottery (b) trials. Text boxes are added here for the reader's benefit; participants obtained these same instructions verbally. a) Example of the decision tree shown during a Peer trial, with option to share or not. b) Example of the decision tree shown during a Lottery trial, with option to invest or not.

Figure 2

Mean percentage of trials in each condition where participants in each group trusted peers or invested in the lottery. Standard error bars are shown.

Figure 3

Percentage of trials in each block where participants trusted peers (a) and invested in the lottery (b). Standard error bars are shown.

Figure 4

Reaction time in milliseconds, averaged across all four blocks, for responses during Peer and Lottery trials, by group. Standard error bars are shown.