Jan O. Haerter & Kristian Moss Bendtsen: "Emergence of Trust and Social Capital"

In a modern business, increasing specialization requires collaboration between professionals to accomplish interdisciplinary tasks. We propose The Expert Game, where each individual must find a specific expert and receive her help. Subjects act in an impersonal environment and under time constraints that provide short term incentives for non-cooperative behavior. Despite this, we observe cooperation between individuals and the self-organization of a sustained trust network, which facilitates efficient communication channels with increased information flow. We build a behavioral model that explains the experimental dynamics. Analysis of the model reveals an exploitation protection mechanism and a measurable social capital, which quantitatively describes the economic utility of trust.

Jan Haerter,  Ph.D. in Physics, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen.

Kristian Moss Bendtsen, Ph.D. student, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen