Trust Experiments, Trust Games, and Surveys

Trust has traditionally been measured in surveys. However, economists, psychologists, and many political scientists have been using trust games in laboratory experiments to measure trust-as-cooperative-behavior in games. Do trust experiments lead to similar or different conclusions as to what trust means? A general review of the literature indicates there is a mismatch between survey-based items and laboratory experimental measures. Using original data from Russia, this article compares a battery of survey-based attitudinal items about trust with laboratory experiments. The study has the same respondents participate in both the survey and the experiment. Sadly, this research concludes that we are far from having a single, coherent, measure of trust.