Social scientists widely believe that trust begets trustworthiness, meaning that persons reward actions that they view as expressing trust. But evidence from the trust game (also known as the investment game)—introduced by Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe and frequently used to test this relationship—is surprisingly inconclusive. The present article therefore reexamines this hypothesis (Experiment 1), using the trust game but incorporating mediation analysis and distinguishing between trust and distrust effects. The trust game has been used to study the effects of trust within a relationship: when A trusts B, does this affect B’s behavior toward A? This research (in Experiment 2) extends the question: when A trusts B, is B more likely to trust another player C in a second (unrelated) game? If so, then trust relationships have a transitive structure. Taken together, findings from these experiments show that trust begets trustworthiness and also trust in others.

社会科学家普遍认为，信任会赢得信任，这意味着人们会奖励他们认为表达信任的行为。但是，令人惊讶的是，无数的证据证明了信任博弈（也称为投资博弈）的证据是不确定的，该博弈是由Berg，Dickhaut和McCabe提出的，并且经常被用来检验这种关系。因此，本文使用信任博弈，但结合了调解分析并区分信任和不信任效应，重新检验了这一假设（实验1）。信任博弈已用于研究关系中信任的影响：当A信任B时，这是否会影响B对A的行为？这项研究（在实验2中）扩展了问题：当A信任B时，B在第二场（无关）游戏中更可能信任另一位玩家C吗？如果是这样，则信任关系具有传递结构。