When trusting someone with your money what’s more important: their reputation or their looks?
.
Looks trump reputation when we’re deciding who to trust with our money.
Via Science Daily:
Our decisions to trust people with our money are based more on how they look then how they behave, according to new research from the University of Warwick.
In a paper recently published in the PLoS One journal, researchers from Warwick Business School, the University College London and Dartmouth College, USA, carried out a series of experiments to see if people made decisions to trust others based on their faces.
They found people are more likely to invest money in someone whose face is generally perceived as trustworthy, even when they are given negative information about this person’s reputation.
And:
The researchers found that 13 out of 15 participants invested more, on average, in the trustworthy identities. In a second experiment, the researchers gave the volunteers information about whether the trustees had good or bad histories. Even with this inside information, the average amount invested in those who looked ‘trustworthy’ was 6% higher.
You can tell a lot about someone just by looking at their face. You have a better than average chance of determining:
- if they are a Nobel Peace Prize winner or a serial killer.
- if a woman is a lesbian.
- if they are a Republican or Democrat.
- if a man is trustworthy.
Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.
