The Role of Trust and Reciprocity in Machiavellian Decision Making

Abstract

The propensity to trust others is the base of cooperation in each society. Understandably it always keeps company with reciprocity. Machiavellian behavioural strategy is characterised by the tendency to manipulate and exploit others. In this exploration below we were searching for the answer, how do a machiavellian person behave in a social dilemma situation. Do they cooperate and trust in a stranger? Do they reciprocate a favour? To modell the common relationships we used the so called Trust-game. To measure the personal traits, we applied the Zuckerman-Kuhlman quiestionnare (ZKPQ) and the MACH-IV. test. We found that high Machs are less cooperative and tend not to reciprocate the received favor.