Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between general trust and trustworthiness. According to the traditional psychological as well as economic approaches, trust has been regarded as simple reflection of trustworthiness. On the other hand, Yamagishi's (1998) "emancipation theory of trust" assigns trust significance of its own, beyond simple reflection of trustworthiness. We developed a device, which we call "game of enthronement," to measure trustful behavior independently from trustworthy behavior, and used it to compare the levels of trust and trustworthiness between American and Japanese Ss. The results show a higher level of trust among American than Japanese Ss, whereas no difference was found in the level of trustworthy behavior between the two samples, implying that trust has its own significance beyond simple reflection of trustworthiness.
