Good Vibrations

Brain

The snap judgments you’ll make about people you don’t know may be evident in the electrical activity of your brain. In a recent study, psychologist Tim Hahn and colleagues used EEG electrodes to monitor brain activity several minutes before conducting a trust game. The researchers found that recorded patterns could predict the level of trust each participant would place in another player at the start of the game.

Hormones

Increases in testosterone may make men warier of strangers. Researchers found that after playing a competitive computer game that boosted the average testosterone level of players, participants rated a set of faces as less trustworthy than they did prior to playing the game.

Smell

Next time you need to ask for a loan, spritz on some lavender first. A study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that subjects who sat in a cubicle scented with lavender lent more money in a trust game than those who smelled peppermint or no scent at all. The calming effect of lavender may temporarily increase levels of interpersonal trust.

Heartbeat

Trust can mean getting in tune emotionally and physically. The heart rates of people who paired up in a trust game were higher and more synchronized than those of participants who did not play, a paper in Physiology & Behavior reports. The concordance may be a marker of trust building, the authors say.

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