Why we trust people who grew up with less

(Press-News.org) When deciding whom to trust, people are more likely to choose individuals who grew up with less money over those who went to private schools or vacationed in Europe, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"Trust is essential for healthy relationships. Without it, romantic partnerships can fail, workplaces can suffer and social divisions can grow,” said lead researcher Kristin Laurin, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia. “But what makes people trust someone in the first place?”

To find out, researchers ran a series of experiments with more than 1,900 participants. They explored whether someone's social class—either while growing up or currently—affects how trustworthy they appear to strangers. 

The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In one experiment, participants were asked to play a trust game with what they thought were other real people but were actually fictional profiles. Each participant filled out a profile and received copies of profiles from their “group.” Some fake profiles described people who grew up with less money—like attending public school or working part-time. Others described more privileged backgrounds, such as going to private school or taking vacations in Europe.

In the game, participants (known as “trusters”) started with 10 raffle tickets for a drawing for two $100 gift cards. They had the option to transfer any number of these raffle tickets to one of the fictional players in their group (known as “trustees”). Trusters were told any tickets transferred to a trustee would then be tripled, and the trustee could decide to return any number of those tickets to the truster.

The study looked at trust as a behavior--putting oneself at the mercy of the other player. How many raffle tickets participants transferred to another player indicated how much they behaviorally trusted that player.

The study also looked at trust as an expectation—believing the other player would be trustworthy. Participants were asked “If you gave all 10 tickets to this person, they would have 30. How many do you think they would give back?”

In similar experiments, researchers adjusted the fake profiles to suggest trustees’ current socioeconomic status and asked participants to rate the morality of the other players. People tended to show more behavioral trust toward individuals from lower-income backgrounds, whether past or present. However, they only believed a player was more trustworthy when the player grew up in a lower-income household.

“Our research shows that people draw a clear line between someone's childhood and their current situation,” Laurin said. “They generally saw people who grew up in lower-class homes as more moral and trustworthy. While they sometimes acted as if they trusted people who are currently lower class, they didn’t always believe those people would honor that trust.”

These findings suggest that people might want to be strategic about how they present themselves in social situations where trust is a component. “If you’ve always been wealthy, for example, you might want to downplay that history and focus on the now, whereas if you’ve always struggled financially, making it clear that you grew up with humble roots might be more to your advantage,” she said.

Laurin noted that while the study shows a preference for trusting those from lower-income backgrounds, especially those who grew up that way, it didn’t ask whether those individuals are actually more trustworthy.

“We didn’t examine whether a person’s childhood or current class background actually influences their behavior,” she said. “That’s a question for future studies—especially to understand when trust is misplaced or when people miss chances to trust others fairly.”

Article: “Trust and Trust Funds: How Others Childhood and Current Social Class Context Influence Trust Behavior and Expectations,” by Kristin Laurin, PhD, Holly Engstrom, PhD, Toni Schmader, PhD, and Khai Qing Chua, MA, University of British Columbia; Nadav Klein, PhD, Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires; and Stéphane Côté, PhD, University of Toronto. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published online May 22, 2025.

Contact: Kristin Laurin, PhD, can be contacted via email at klaurin@psych.ubc.ca.

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA’s membership includes  173,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve lives.

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