Gender moderates the effect of homo economicus belief on trust

We proposed that gender may moderate the effect of homo economicus belief on trust and conducted 2 experiments to test this hypothesis. Before completing the trust measurements, participants in Study 1 transcribed either a passage about homo economicus belief (experimental condition) or a passage about psychological methods (control condition). Participants in Study 2 unscrambled 10 sentences that either contained a word associated with economics (experimental condition) or did not contain any words associated with economics (control condition). Results showed that (a) levels of trust among the experimental condition participants were significantly lower than those in the control condition; (b) men in the experimental condition showed significantly lower levels of trust than did men in the control condition, but there was no difference in the trust levels of women in the experimental and control conditions. Results indicate that homo economicus belief inhibits trust and that this effect is moderated by gender.