Trust Becomes Habitual in Long-term Relationships, New Study Finds

Lisa Franchi September 06, 2013

The length of time you’ve spent together with your special someone predicts the level of trust you give to him or her. This is the message of a new study that involved fMRI brain scans.

Researchers at Stanford University, headed by sociologist Karen Cook, wanted to understand why some people choose to reconcile after they’ve become victims of betrayal whilst others don’t. Their theory was that couples who have just been together for a short while would engage in conscious, deliberate problem solving when deciding on how to respond to a deceit or betrayal whilst those who have been together for a long time would take the trustworthy behaviour for granted and consider a breach of trust an exception to the rule.

To test whether their theory was correct, the research team conducted an online experiment wherein participants were given eight dollars each and need to decide whether to keep the money or give it to an unseen partner. If the subject gives the money away, its value would triple. Then, their ‘partner’ would have to decide whether to keep it all or give half of the money to the participant.

What the subjects didn’t know is that their unseen partner was actually a computer. In some cases, it was programmed to betray them earlier in the game and at other times, it betrayed the subjects later.

Cook and her colleagues found that participants who were betrayed earlier in the experiment were more likely to keep the money than those who were betrayed at a later time. Furthermore, it took a longer time for these participants to make a decision, which suggest that they were putting more conscious thought into their decisions than those who had late betrayal.

The team performed the same experiment in a laboratory wherein the subjects were hooked up to fMRI scanners. Looking at their brain scans, the researchers found that the anterior cingulate cortex – the part of the brain associated with conscious learning, planning and problem solving; and the lateral frontal cortex – area associated with feelings of uncertainty, became more active after early betrayal. On the other hand, the lateral temporal cortex, which is associated with habituated decision making, was more active when the participants experienced late betrayal.

This study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source of this article:

Effect of relationship experience on trust recovery following a breach