Who to trust: Study shows guilt-prone people are more trustworthy

The researchers, from the business schools at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Carnegie Mellon, sought to predict trustworthy behaviors and intentions, especially within an organizational context. They set up economic games and surveys to measure traits like extraversion, openness, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and guilt-proneness.

 

“We theorized that guilt-proneness predicts trustworthiness because people who are high in guilt-proneness feel more responsible for others,” says Emma Levine, an assistant professor at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, “and this is exactly what we found.”

Guilt-proneness is not the same as feeling guilty, and this distinction is key to understanding why guilt-proneness is a positive trait, especially as it relates to trustworthiness.

 

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