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We collect data on trust and trustworthy behavior from eighty-four iterations of the Berg,Dickhaut, and McCabe Investment game (the “trust” game). We perform a meta-analysis ofthese games in order to identify the effect of experimental protocols and cross-country culturaldifferences on trust and trustworthiness. We find that approximately 40% of the variance in trustand 30% of the variance in trustworthiness is explained by changes to experimental protocols.We also find that cultural variables that are highly correlated with a country’s stock of socialcapital, such as ethnic fractionalization and income inequality, are most closely related totrustworthiness rather than trust. We use these findings to show that the negative relationshipbetween diversity and social capital disappears as competitive free markets become moreprevalent in a country.
