Emotional Communication and Trust: Valence, Beliefs, and Ambiguity Attitudes

Abstract

Trust depends on expected reciprocity and attitudes toward the associated uncertainty. This paper tests whether opportunities to communicate anticipated emotions encourage trust. In a preregistered modified trust game, 350 U.S. Prolific trustors are randomly assigned to one of four conditions before their trust decision: no communication, expressing anticipated happiness, expressing anticipated disappointment, or a flexible choice between these two valences. Emotional communication is delivered through a structured text message. An incentivized post-decision belief-hedge task separates participants’ expected trustee returns from ambiguity attitudes. Results show that emotional communication produces a positive but imprecise effect on Trust, with a larger estimate under flexible valence choice. It also increases expected trustee returns. Happiness leads to greater ambiguity seeking, and disappointment leads to lower likelihood insensitivity. Overall, emotional communication reshapes perceived reciprocity, suggesting that giving trustors access to emotion expression may encourage Trust.