Trust and social reciprocity in adolescence – A matter of perspective-taking

• We investigate the relationship between perspective-taking and trust in adolescents.
• We quantify trust with an online paradigm derived from game theory.
• Perspective-taking is associated with specific mechanisms of trust and reciprocity.
• A higher sensitivity to others' perspectives leads to higher initial trust.
• However, if others behave untrustworthy, it leads to a steeper decline in trust.

Changes in social behaviour from childhood to adulthood have been suggested to be driven by an increased sensitivity to others' perspectives. Yet, the link between perspective-taking and social processes, such as trust and reciprocity, has rarely been investigated during adolescence. Using two trust games with a cooperative and an unfair counterpart and an online perspective-taking task with 50 adolescents, we show that those with a higher perspective-taking tendency demonstrate greater trust towards others and higher levels of trust during cooperative interactions. Both low and high perspective-takers adapted their levels of trust in response to unfair behaviour. However, high perspective-takers reduced their trust more drastically and showed more malevolent and less benevolent tit-for-tat when they were treated unfairly by their counterpart. The findings suggest that a higher perspective-taking tendency in adolescence is associated with specific mechanisms of trust and reciprocity, as opposed to undifferentiated increases in positive social behaviour towards others.