We provide direct evidence that people with strong family ties have a lower level of trust in strangers than people with weak family ties, and argue that this association is causal. We also investigate the mechanisms that underlie this effect, and provide evidence that these revolve around the level of outward exposure: factors that limit exposure limit subjects’ experience as well as motivatio...

Do friends bound each other's self-enhancement tendencies? Do friends display the self-serving bias (SSB; i.e. taking individual credit for success but blaming a partner for failure)? Dyads consisting of either friends or strangers engaged in an interdependent-outcomes creativity test, received bogus success or failure feedback at the dyadic level, and made responsibility attributions for the j...

This study focuses on the spatial structure of stranger social accessibility in networked communities and risk avoidance when socializing with strangers. Using Confession Wall as an example, this contends that community media fosters new connections by compensating for issues between strangers local through flexible mediation online offline interactions. connectivity minimizes costs risks emoti...

Under what conditions can cooperation be sustained in a network of strangers? Here we study the role of institutions and uncover a new behavioral foundation for the use of monetary systems. In an experiment, anonymous subjects could cooperate or defect in bilateral random encounters. This sequence of encounters was indefinite; hence multiple equilibria were possible, including full intertempora...