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Rational and Biased Trust Abigail Barr, CSAE, Oxford University WPS/2004-22 Download the Paper (PDF format) - August 1, 2004 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing. ABSTRACT: This paper investigates whether expectations of trustworthiness and resulting acts of trust accord with an objective model of trustworthiness or are biased. Combining experimental and survey data, I find that Ghanaian workers appropriately take account of the religiousness of trustees, but expect those with more children to be less as opposed to more trustworthy, and females to be less and the associationally active to be more trustworthy when they are neither. Trustors do not account for the negative impact on trustworthiness of various recent negative experiences and the positive impact of involvement in voluntary work, full time work, and indigenousness. SUGGESTED CITATION: Abigail Barr, "Rational and Biased Trust" (August 1, 2004). The Centre for the Study of African Economies Working Paper Series. Working Paper 222. http://www.bepress.com/csae/paper222