Understanding Cheap Talk and the Emergence of Trust in Global Software Engineering: An Evolutionary Game Theory Perspective

While studying global software engineering teams, we found that informal non-work related conversations are positively associated with trust. We sought to investigate this phenomenon more carefully. To this end, we employed evolutionary game theory. In that literature, the kind of non-work related conversations we observed are referred to as "cheap talk". We modified the original Stag-hunt game, and have it "play" repeatedly by a fixed population. Doing so, we are able to demonstrate how cheap talk in remote collaborations over the Internet is powerful enough to facilitate the emergence of trust and improve the probability of collaboration. We elaborate on the conditions for success and discuss both theoretical and practical implications of our findings for collaboration.