Is the decision made by someone to trust equivalent to taking a risky bet?

Through experiments, we investigate whether the decision made by someone to trust is equivalent to taking a risky bet. It can be examined by comparing people’s minimum acceptance risk probability (MAP) in trust game and risky dictator game. As a result, we find that experiment participants’ mean MAP in trust game is significantly higher than their mean MAP in risky dictator game, no matter the stake size is small or large. That is to say people do not treat trust equivalent to a risky bet. We argue it is because people perceive certain social risk in trust. What’s more, we observe that people behave in general more risk averse in large stake size scenario games than in small stake size scenario games. In addition, we find out that some human characteristics seem to be able to win more trust from others.