What could possibly cause you to trust a complete stranger?

            What could possibly cause you trust a complete stranger?

 

            It comes as no surprise that people tend to favor others of the same in-group. What is an in-group, you ask? “An in-group is a social group towards which an individual feels loyalty and respect, usually due to membership in the group. This loyalty often manifests itself as an in-group bias.” Now that we have defined in-group and out-group, we can now move on to the core of this conversation. How many times have you instantly denied a friend request on Facebook? I know first hand that I have instantly denied numerous people for reasons unbeknownst to me. 

Why in the world would we trust one stranger any more than another stranger if you don’t really know either one? Luckily, this question was addressed in a recent study by the Association for Psychological Science. The study began by establishing two possible bases for group-based trust. The first is stereotyping – people tend to judge in-group members as being nicer, more helpful, generous, trustworthy, and fair. The second is expectation – people tend to expect moderately better treatment from in-group members because they are thought to value other in-group members’ interests.

            Each study participant was offered a choice between an unknown sum of money from an in-group member or an out-group member (and were told that the in-group and out-group members controlled the amount of money to allocate as they desired). The initial result was that participants overwhelmingly chose the in-group member option. Also, surprisingly, this result held true even when the stereotype of the in-group was more negative than that of the out-group. Good, bad or indifferent, the stereotype was ignored in favor of group identity. But, when the participants were told that the in-group money giver did not know they were part of the same group, the situation drastically changed. Participants resorted to making their choices on the basis of stereotype. If the in-group was portrayed negatively, then the participants were much more likely to choose the out-group member option, and visa versa.

            What does this all mean? The study suggests that when members of the in-group are mutually aware of their commonality, there is an expectation of better treatment than would be received from someone in the out-group. When there is not a clear understanding of commonality, people rely on stereotypes much more frequently.

            Why am I even talking about this? It gets really interesting when focused on electronic communication. Online, most people are not aware of whether others’ are a part of “in” or “out” groups unless they do some research and find background information. Based on the results of this study, in online cases that do not provide instant feedback about possible commonalities, I would expect most people to rely on group stereotypes when deciding who to trust (follow, read, bookmark, tweet, etc).  These social networks have the ability to establish group commonalities, interests, and dislikes intuitively, but and it is a big but, one must be equipped with the knowledge and desire to search for these characteristics. Furthermore, if the social networks have the ability to define groups, how can we make sense of these connections? How can we take a common interest and establish a much more successful way of using this data? Given the current extreme popularity of social media and networking, we have the perfect grounds to test this hypothesis with up to the minute information. Regardless of the amount of commonalities found, and research in online interaction, at the end of the day, human interaction always wins.

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