Stereotypes of poor and rich people’s trust relationships with friends: Poor adults and children are more trustful of friends

Trust is an important aspect of interpersonal relationships. However, to date, no study has investigated the stereotypes of poor and rich people's trusting relationships with friends. Our study investigated whether such stereotypes exist and the degree to which they extend to children. Experiment 1 used a behavioral evaluation method and found that, compared to rich people, poor people are stereotyped as trusting their friends more. Experiment 2 reached the same conclusion using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure paradigm. Experiments 3 and 4 investigated whether and to what extent this stereotype applies to children, and found that while participants held such stereotypes towards 14- and 9-year-old children, they did not towards 6-year-old children. The findings of this study have implications for how adults communicate with poor and rich children.