game 2 of 16 · measures fairness
Trust Game (investment game)
Inside TELLS it's “The Hand-off” — send a stranger as much as you like. It triples on the way. They choose what to send back.
part of the full 16-game test · about 12 minutes
What the Trust Game (investment game) is
You get $10 and may send any part of it to a stranger. Whatever you send triples on the way — then the stranger decides how much, if anything, to send back. Economists Berg, Dickhaut and McCabe published it in 1995 as the 'investment game', and it has been the standard laboratory measure of trust ever since.
What it measures
The amount you send is a direct, costly measure of how much you trust an anonymous other person — talk is free, but this transfer isn't. Sending a lot signals trust that cooperation pays; keeping it all signals that you don't lend the benefit of the doubt. TELLS scores it into your fairness axis, coloured by generosity.
Given the power and no consequences, you take what you can.
You keep what's yours, but you won't stoop to taking someone else's.
Total power over a stranger's money, and you still play it straight.
Why hiring assessments use it
Trust-game variants show up in behavioral assessments because reciprocity predicts how people behave in teams — who extends credit to colleagues, who plays defensively. Employers rarely say so out loud; the game says it for you.
TELLS is an independent project — not affiliated with pymetrics, Harver, or any employer's assessment. This is the fun version.
Archetypes this game exposes
The fairness axis is load-bearing for these three.
See what your play says about you
This game is 1 of 16. Play them all and the engine reads you onto 1 of 18 archetypes — free, sharable, no account.
Find my archetype