Trust is an important factor for cooperation in social dilemmas because of uncertainty and free-riding fears. Many contemporary social problems are characterized by uncertainty because they depend on the cooperation of thousands to resolve. Social trust as a personal belief is necessary but not sufficient for cooperation under these conditions. In contemporary social dilemmas, the trust-cooperation relationship likely depends on cultural trust: what people believe most other people believe about the trustworthiness of people in general. I test this theory in two experimental studies. In the first, cultural trust has an effect on cooperation independent of participants’ first-order social trust. In the second, I find that if participants learn that others expect them to not believe information on the trustfulness of most other people, they will behave more or less cooperatively, depending on whether the information indicates most others’ trust is high or low. I end with a discussion of the implications my findings have for addressing social dilemmas in an era of declining social trust.

由于不确定性和搭便车的恐惧，信任是在社会困境中进行合作的重要因素。许多当代社会问题的特点是不确定性，因为它们依赖于数千人的合作来解决。在这种情况下，作为个人信仰的社会信任对于合作来说是必要的，但还不够。在当代社会困境中，信任-合作关系可能取决于文化信任：人们相信大多数其他人对一般人的可信度的看法。我在两个实验研究中测试了这个理论。首先，文化信任对合作的影响独立于参与者的一阶社会信任。在第二个方面，我发现如果参与者了解到其他人希望他们不相信大多数其他人的信任信息，他们或多或少会合作，这取决于信息表明大多数其他人的信任度是高还是低。最后，我讨论了我的发现对于在社会信任下降的时代解决社会困境的意义。