Hi, I'm Himalaya Girard
Research Assistant at the Donders Institute.
Deconvolving Trust from Risk using Prospect Theory.
Would you trust a stranger with $10?
What if it was a dice roll instead?
Traditional economics treats trust and risk as identical. But behaviorally and neurally, they're profoundly different. This research uses Prospect Theory to understand why.
Trust Game
01 You have $10
02 → Invest with Partner B
03 → Amount triples
04 → Partner decides what to return
The uncertainty:
Will they be generous or selfish?
Risk Game
01 You have $10
02 → Invest in lottery
03 → Amount triples
04 → Computer randomly returns money
The uncertainty:
Pure chance, no human decision
"The fact that investments and returns are positive in most experiments is a puzzle from a game-theoretic viewpoint."— Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe (1995)
My Approach
I'm testing if Prospect Theory, the Nobel Prize-winning math of gambling, can explain why we trust strangers.
The Framework
Prospect Theory
The Innovation
Inverted Trust Game
The Goal
Deconvolve trust from risk
Explore the Research
Dive into the theory, see the methodology, or read the papers that shaped this work.
The Theory
Interactive Prospect Theory demo. Adjust parameters and see how trust differs from risk.
The Process
From literature review to experiment design. See how we got here and where we're going.
The Literature
69 papers that shaped this research. Browse by category, search by topic.