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We report the results of a trust survey and public goods experiment conducted with high school students in rural Thailand and Cambodia that together help clarify the dynamics at work in sustaining economic cooperation within these two third-world communities. We find that standard survey measures of trust employed by the World Values Survey, which form the basis of most macro-empirical investigations of trust and political-economic development, are not useful for predicting contributions to a public goods game. Expectations, on the other hand, profoundly influence contributions and do so independently of trust levels. However, this influence is complex and depends on the distribution of player types. We observe a distribution similar to previous studies, with the largest group, principled reciprocators, updating their behavior quickly based on expectations of trustworthiness. Indeed, this study suggests that trustworthiness in particular is more important than trust in general and further challenges 'a-rational' theories of trust. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

We report the results of a trust survey and public goods experiment conducted with high school students in rural Thailand and Cambodia that together help clarify the dynamics at work in sustaining economic cooperation within these two third-world communities. We find that standard survey measures of trust employed by the World Values Survey, which form the basis of most macro-empirical investigations of trust and political-economic development, are not useful for predicting contributions to a public goods game. Expectations, on the other hand, profoundly influence contributions and do so independently of trust levels. However, this influence is complex and depends on the distribution of player types. We observe a distribution similar to previous studies, with the largest group, principled reciprocators, updating their behavior quickly based on expectations of trustworthiness. Indeed, this study suggests that trustworthiness in particular is more important than trust in general and further challenges 'a-rational' theories of trust.

In an earlier article we challenged the findings of Fowler and Dawes (FD) that two genes predict voter turnout as part of a more general critique of "genopolitics." FD now acknowledge that their finding of a "significant" direct association between MAOA and voting was incorrect, but claim to have replicated their finding of an "indirect" association between 5HTT, self-reported church attendance, and self-reported voting. We show that this finding is likely driven by population stratification and omitted variable bias. We then explain why, from the standpoints of genetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, genopolitics is a fundamentally misguided undertaking; we also respond to FD's charge that some of our previous statements concerning genetics are "highly misleading," "extremely disingenuous," and "even incorrect." We show that their criticisms demonstrate a lack of awareness of some basic principles in genetics and of discoveries in molecular genetics over the past 50 years.