Who’s a yea-sayer? habitual trust and affirmative response behaviour

We test the hypothesis that people who habitually trust others respond more affirmatively to questions (i.e. acquiescence). Six studies explore whether people’s habitual tendency to trust others translates into a general acquiescent response bias. By re-analysing large-scale cross-country data, Study 1 shows that participants’ level of habitual trust predicts agreement across multiple and diverse concepts. Studies 2a and 2b show that habitual trust predicts acquiescent responding in classic psychological questionnaires. Habitual trust likewise predicts behavioural acquiescence, such as an agreement to assign monetary awards to others (Study 3) and staying with the suggested default option in a real choice paradigm (Study 4). Furthermore, the relation between habitual trust and acquiescent responding holds across different communication contexts (Study 5). These results imply that habitual trust predicts how individuals respond to questionnaire items that are used across a variety of research domains.