Trusting a stranger if you are ambiguity averse: The relationship between ambiguity attitude and trusting behaviour

This thesis investigates how people’s attitudes towards ambiguity affect their trust in strangers. One thing that makes trusting strangers is the ambiguity about the stranger’s trustworthiness. The central research question address in this thesis is: do more ambiguity averse people trust strangers less? The experiment was run amongst 89 subjects who are students, studying in the Netherlands. The results show that women and men did not differ in ambiguity aversion or trust decisions. There was no evidence that women trust strangers less if the stranger is completely anonymous nor was found that women are more likely to trust a stranger if the stranger is a female and that men are more likely to trust a stranger if the stranger is a male. However, there was significant evidence found that participants who are ambiguity averse, trust strangers with unknown gender more than participants who are ambiguity seeking.