The Influence of Similarity and Mimicry on Decisions to Trust

Research on trust development has generally focused on how similarities between people influence trust allocation. However, similarity in interests and beliefs, which underpins trust development and may be critical to relationship success, is seldom apparent upon initial interaction and thus may not be a primary predictor of initial trust decisions. Here we ask how mimicry, a visible social cue, affects trust decisions alongside similarity. We used a “chat-room” style task to independently manipulate the degree to which participants were similar to a set of avatars and the degree to which those avatars displayed mimicry. We then assessed trust decisions in both financial and social domains. Our results show that together with similarity, mimicry is an important independent predictor of trust decisions. This work has implications for understanding how and when trust is allocated, as well how to facilitate successful interactions.