The development of trust-responsiveness

• Applicant: Dr. Sebastian Grüneisen
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 561279786

Cooperation is often risky since, by participating, we make ourselves dependent on the contributions of others. A key way for actors to overcome these risks is to build up trust, allowing individuals to voluntarily make themselves reliant on others based on a positive expectation of their cooperative inclinations. However, cooperation would hardly get off the ground without a second key component, namely, individuals showing a responsiveness to others’ trust by recognizing their voluntary reliance and being willing to live up to their expectations. Despite its fundamental importance, relatively little is known about the developmental origins of trust-based cooperation, and most prior research has focused on whom, when, and on the basis of what information children trust others. By contrast, hardly any developmental research has investigated the second crucial component of trust-based cooperation: the capacity to respond to others’ trust by proving reliable. The current project will fill this gap by launching a comprehensive investigation of trust-responsiveness in young children. Using tightly controlled behavioral experiments (all preregistered and in compliance with open science guidelines), I will examine when children first become responsive to others’ trust and what cognitive mechanisms support this development. Second, I will investigate some developmental implications of children becoming trust-responsive. Specifically, I will test the theoretical proposal that trust can have an empowering effect by boosting the trust-responsive individual’s confidence in the qualities they were trusted to possess, resulting in a greater motivation to cultivate those qualities. Finally, the project will address potential pitfalls of trust-responsiveness. People have previously been shown to be particularly prone to engage in transgressions when doing so facilitates a cooperative purpose. Here, I will explore whether, in a similar vein, others’ trust can make children feel obligated to prove reliable even when this requires acting in ways they would otherwise deem morally impermissible. Together, the project will contribute to a more holistic understanding of trust-responsiveness, its underlying mechanisms, and social consequences. Further, the studies have potential practical implications for educational settings, especially in the context of skill development and with regards to discouraging transgressive behaviors.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Robert Hepach