Cross-cultural trust and resource sharing: The Role of Ideal Affect

信任是社会协调与合作的基础，被许多人认为是高度运转的社会的基础。事实上，人们与他们信任的人分享的东西更多，信任程度更高的社会拥有更高效的司法系统、更高质量的政府官僚机构、更少的腐败，以及更发达的经济。人们如何决定信任谁，特别是当他们需要在信息很少的情况下迅速做出这些决定的时候？值得注意的是，人们用来判断可信度的线索，以及这些线索在不同文化中的差异，人们知之甚少，尽管这些线索可能会关键地决定人们是朋友还是敌人。这一点现在尤其重要，因为人们与其他文化观念和做法与自己不同的人有了更多的接触。在这个拟议的项目中，蔡和他的同事测试了这样一个假设，即人们信任他人，并与那些情感表达与人们理想中想要的感觉(理想情感)相匹配的人分享更多资源。他们预测，人们信任和分享资源的文化差异是由于人们理想希望感受到的文化差异造成的。这一预测在三个行为实验和三个功能磁共振实验以及一项纵向研究中得到了验证。这些发现将为不同文化中的人际信任提供洞察。在之前的工作中，我们观察到北美文化成员更看重兴奋的状态-兴奋、热情和兴高采烈--而东亚文化成员更看重平静的状态-平静、和平、宁静--更多。这些文化差异影响了人们对谁的信任以及他们与谁共享资源。欧洲裔美国人信任并给予那些表现出兴奋(VS)的人更多，而东亚人信任并给予那些表现平静(VS)的人更多。这些发现表明，人们信任并给予那些情感表达与他们理想情感相匹配的人更多。这种理想的情感匹配甚至比种族或性别上的匹配更重要，这表明情感表情可能比更静态的面部特征更能表明共同的价值观。在拟议的项目中，我们使用各种实验、跨文化和神经成像方法来检查情景因素(即，有时间考虑；心情好与坏；知道某人的声誉)是否增加或减少了人们使用情绪线索来决定信任谁和与谁分享。此外，我们使用纵向设计，考察在人们适应新文化的同时，这些过程是否会影响信任和友谊的发展--特别是在美国学习的中国人和在中国学习的美国人。总之，这些研究将：(1)增进对人们如何决定信任和共享资源的理解；(2)促进跨文化沟通和交流；以及(3)提高人们对潜意识中的文化偏见的认识，这些偏见可能导致在像美国这样的多元文化社会中对特定群体(例如，双文化亚裔美国人)的歧视。

Trust is the basis of social coordination and cooperation, and considered by many to be the very foundation of high-functioning societies. Indeed, people share more with people whom they trust, and societies with higher levels of trust have more efficient judicial systems, higher quality government bureaucracies, less corruption, and are more economically developed. How do people decide whom to trust, especially when they need to make these decisions quickly, with very little information? Remarkably, little is known about the cues that people use to judge trustworthiness and how these cues might vary across cultures, despite the fact that these cues may critically determine whether people become friend or foe. This is especially important now because people are in greater contact with others whose cultural ideas and practices differ from their own. In the proposed project, Tsai and colleagues test the hypothesis that people trust and share more resources with others whose emotional expressions match how people ideally want to feel (their ideal affect). They predict that cultural differences in whom people trust and share resources with are due to cultural differences in how people ideally want to feel. This prediction is tested in three behavioral and three fMRI experiments, as well as a longitudinal study. These findings will provide insights about interpersonal trust in different cultures.In previous work, we observed that members of North American cultures value excited states---excitement, enthusiasm, and elation---more, while members of East Asian cultures value calm states---calm, peacefulness, serenity---more. These cultural differences influenced whom people trusted and with whom they shared resources. European Americans trusted and gave more to people who showed excitement (vs. calm), whereas East Asians trusted and gave more to people who showed calm (vs. excitement). These findings demonstrate that people trust and give more to others whose emotional expressions match their ideal affect. This ideal affect match mattered even more than matches in race or sex, suggesting that emotional expressions may signal shared values even more than more static facial features. In the proposed project, we use a variety of experimental, cross-cultural, and neuroimaging methods to examine whether situational factors (i.e., having time to deliberate; being in a good vs. bad mood; knowing someone's reputation) increase or decrease people's use of emotional cues to decide whom to trust and share with. In addition, using a longitudinal design, we examine whether these processes influence the development of trust and friendship while people are adjusting to new cultures -- specifically, Chinese studying in the U.S., and Americans studying in China. Together, these studies will: (1) advance understanding of how people decide whom to trust and share resources; (2) promote cross-cultural communication and exchange; and (3) increase awareness about the unconscious cultural biases that may result in discrimination against particular groups (e.g., bicultural Asian Americans) in multicultural societies like the U.S.