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Phase 5 • Upcoming

Data Collection

Planned recruitment and testing phase to empirically validate the theoretical framework with real participants.

01

The Final Test

After months of theoretical work, experimental design, and optimization, it's time to test the framework with real human behavior.

Can Prospect Theory explain trust decisions? Or do we need additional social preference parameters?

Recruitment Strategy

Target Sample

Sample Size 100 (Behav) / 55 (fMRI)
Age Range 18-65 years
Source University
Duration ~2h

Compensation

Base Pay €35.00
Bonus Performance based
Total Est. ~€55
Incentivized for genuine decisions

Power Analysis & Resources

Behavioral

  • • 100 subjects
  • • ≈ 80% power for d = 0.28
  • • ≈ 200 hours cubicle time (10 GB)

fMRI

  • • 55 subjects (50 + 10% attrition)
  • • ≈ 80% power for d = 0.68
  • • ≈ 82.5h MRI + 82.5h cubicle (825 GB)

Protocol: MB3ME3

Study Phases

01

Trustee Role

Participants first play the role of the trustee to establish their baseline social preferences and reciprocity levels.

02

Inverted Trust Game

The main experiment. Participants make decisions in both Social (Trust) and Non-Social (Risk) conditions.

03

Additional Measures

Measurement of prosociality levels and various questionnaires. Participants receive ~€55 for their participation.

Quality Control

Inclusion Criteria

  • • Passed comprehension checks
  • • Response times within plausible range
  • • Completed >90% of trials

Exclusion Criteria

  • • Failed attention checks
  • • Suspiciously fast responses (<200ms)
  • • Invariant responding (same answer)

Planned Analyses

Primary Analysis

Hierarchical model comparison of 16 nested Prospect Theory models, testing whether Trust and Risk games share the same parameters or require distinct parameter values.

H₀: θtrust = θrisk (Same parameters)

H₁: θtrust ≠ θrisk (Different parameters)

Secondary Analyses

  • • Parameter Recovery: Validation of individual-level estimates
  • • Individual Differences: Correlation with personality traits
  • • Inverted Trust: Reciprocity validation

Open Science

Preregistered on OSF. All analysis code, anonymized data, and materials will be made publicly available.

Preregistered • Open Data

Projected Timeline

Q1 2025

Ethics approval + Preregistration

Q2 2025

Pilot testing (N=20) + experiment refinement

Q3-Q4 2025

Main data collection (N=200)

Q1 2026

Data analysis + Manuscript preparation