Mechanisms of Trust Formation Under Different Conditions of Political Identity

Individual political behavior is a manifestation of social behavior, and individual voting behavior indicated his/her political choices and political identity. After democratization in Taiwan, presidential elections show bipartisan polarization and reinforce general distrust of social phenomena. Therefore, this study intends to explore how people format their trust behavior when they interact with others of the same or different political identity groups. In stage 1, the computer randomly assigns trustors and trustees and does not show political identity of 2012 presidential candidates (Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen). In stage 2, the computer displays political identity logo by random arrangement. In stage 3, the subjects can choose their preferred objects of the same or different political identity logo by themselves. There are three mechanisms of trust behavior formation under different identity condition.（1）Win-win mechanism: Win-win strategy is that both trustor and trustee attempts to maximize their providence and return through exchanging with the targets of the same or different political identity groups from the beginning round. （2）Identity mechanism: Under the condition of political identity choice by subjects, identity effect becomes strongly significant at the beginning of the first round on the third stage of the experiment, especially for that of Ma-Ma group. （3）mutuality mechanism: Mutuality effect is very significant in all three stages of trust experiment, especially in the second and third rounds of each stage. When people exchange with the same political identity groups, it will produce the phenomenon of polarization. When the trustee return high proportion profits to the trustor in the first round, the trustor will feedback more in the second round. However, if the trustee return low proportion profits to the trustor, the trustor will feedback less and less, even lower than exchanging with different political identity groups.