While we might not realize it, when it comes to deciding which people we trust more, we tend to lean towards people who grew up poor, according to a new study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by the American Psychological Association. We seem to trust those who grew up in middle to lower income households versus wealthy households. "Trust is essential for healthy relationships. Without it, romantic partnerships can fail, workplaces can suffer, and social divisions can grow,” said lead researcher Kristin Laurin, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, in a press release. “But what makes people trust someone in the first place?"Studying Trust in StrangersFor this study, the research team presented the 1,900 study participants with a series of experiments that looked at how someone’s social class, past or present, impacted how trustworthy they were to strangers. One of the experiments had the participants, known as “trusters,” play a game with other people they believed to be real, when in actuality they were playing against a fictional profile. Each truster was placed into a “group” and asked to fill out a personal profile. They then received a profile from the other members of their group, though these were all fake. According to the study, some of these fake profilesmentioned attending public school or working part-time, indicating that this person grew up with fewer means. Other profiles indicated that the person went to private school and often vacationed in Europe for the summer. This indicates that this person grew up in a more privileged situation. Trustworthy or Not TrustworthyIn this particular experiment, the participants were given 10 raffle tickets that could be used in a drawing for two gift cards. If a truster transferred any number of their tickets to a trustee, those transferred tickets would triple. From here, the trustee could then return a number of the tickets to the truster. The number of tickets the truster transferred indicated how trustworthy they believed the trustee to be.   Part of the experiment also looked at the expectations around trust. The experiment asked, “If you gave all 10 tickets to this person, they would have 30. How many do you think they would give back?”Another experiment in the study revealed each of the fake players' socioeconomic backgrounds. The research team then asked the participants to rate the fake players based on morality.  The results indicated that participants tended to think those with past or current low socioeconomic backgrounds were more trustworthy, but actually believed someone was more trustworthy if they grew up in a low socioeconomic situation. “Our research shows that people draw a clear line between someone's childhood and their current situation,” Laurin said in a press release. “They generally saw people who grew up in lower-class homes as more moral and trustworthy. While they sometimes acted as if they trusted people who are currently lower class, they didn’t always believe those people would honor that trust.”Trust in the Long Run With these results, the research team thinks that people might want to approach situations where trust is important with a bit more strategy. “If you’ve always been wealthy, for example, you might want to downplay that history and focus on the now, whereas if you’ve always struggled financially, making it clear that you grew up with humble roots might be more to your advantage,” Laurin said in a press release.Another thing that Laurin noted is that even though the study participants tended to trust the lower-income individuals, the study did not indicate if lower-income people were actually more trustworthy than wealthy people. “We didn’t examine whether a person’s childhood or current class background actually influences their behavior,” she said in a press release. “That’s a question for future studies — especially to understand when trust is misplaced or when people miss chances to trust others fairly.”Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Trust and Trust Funds: How Others’ Childhood and Current Social Class Context Influence Trust Behavior and ExpectationsA graduate of UW-Whitewater, Monica Cull wrote for several organizations, including one that focused on bees and the natural world, before coming to Discover Magazine. Her current work also appears on her travel blog and Common State Magazine. Her love of science came from watching PBS shows as a kid with her mom and spending too much time binging Doctor Who. #tend #trust #those #lowincome #backgrounds