THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF TRUST
研究发现个人收入与信任程度呈倒U型关系：过度信任者易被骗，信任不足者错失机会，两种极端造成的收入损失堪比放弃大学教育。
We investigate the relationship between individual trust and individual economic performance. We find that individual income is hump-shaped in a measure of intensity of trust beliefs. Our interpretation is that highly trusting individuals tend to assume too much social risk and to be cheated more often, ultimately performing less well than those with a belief close to the mean trustworthiness of the population. However, individuals with overly pessimistic beliefs avoid being cheated, but give up profitable opportunities, therefore underperforming. The cost of either too much or too little trust is comparable to the income lost by forgoing college. Our findings hold in large-scale international survey data, as well as inside a country with high-quality institutions, and are also supported by experimental findings.