Development of Positive Attitudes Among Youth and the Trust Game

This paper analyzes the contribution of youth's different time allocations to positive behaviours in exchanges. In particular the psychological literature states that spending time within youth voluntary organizations fosters positive development of the young more than hanging out with friends. This paper aims at deepening the knowledge of the psychological bases of the observed outcomes of a basic trust game. Undergraduate students played a basic trust game and filled in a questionnaire collecting information about the use of their spare time. It emerges that higher passed amounts positively correlate with more time spent in youth organizations, but hanging out with friends seems to have no correlation. Moreover, according to the psychological literature, the causality mechanism should go from participation to social networks to higher levels of trust, altruism, reciprocity and inequity aversion