We let subjects interact with anonymous partners in trust (investment) games with and without one of two kinds of pre-play communication: numerical (tabular) only, and verbal and numerical. We find that either kind of pre-play communication increases trusting, trustworthiness, or both, in...

In this working paper we report on two trust games: a BDM-like game which is interpreted through its use of the possibly suggestive words “show up fee,” “sends,” “tripled,” “send back”; and an uninterpreted spatial game that does not use these words suggestive or not. In the...