This is spin-off post to the series on teams and groups:
While working on the articles about teams, I had to constantly use the term “trust”, and I think it’s a good idea to explain its origins.
Trust is generally defined as an ‘assured reliance on someone’, or, as ‘a belief that another person will act consistently with the expectations’.
Both ‘assured’ and ‘belief’ means that reciprocity is only expected. Annual Review of Sociology magazine provides a better explanation:
Trust is the willingness of one party (the trustor) to become vulnerable to another party (the trustee) on the presumption that the trustee will act in ways that benefit the trustor. In addition, the trustor does not have control over the actions of the trustee.
Another good explanation is given by OECD:
An individual trusts if she voluntarily places resources at the disposal of another party without any legal commitment from the latter. In addition, the act of trust is associated with an expectation that the act will pay off in terms of the investor’s goals.
To summarize, trust is the act of placing belief in another person without control over them, and making yourself vulnerable or investing resources in them with the expectation that they will reciprocate by acting in your interest. Trust is a proactive behavior, where you take the first step in trusting the person and anticipate that they will behave accordingly.
Instances of trusting behaviour are so common in life that people rarely clearly identify or notice them.
For example, you might offer a colleague to stay at your place when they visit your city. The guest will use some of the resources like water or soap and potentially can, for example, break things. You’re voluntarily placing resources at their disposal as there’s no legal obligation for them to pay in a situation when damage does occur.
Another case would be helping a junior dev on your team to understand a complex topic, even when mentorship is not a presupposed or contractually expected part of your job duties. You’re voluntarily placing resources (time) at their disposal.
For most people it feels naturally good or virtuous to trust others.
Trusting behavior is altruistic, and is a powerful evolutionary mechanism observed not only in humans but in many other species.
The renowned evolutionary biologist Hamilton studied the behaviors of various species that exhibit what appears to be altruistic behavior. In his paper “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour”, he introduced and mathematically demonstrated the concept of “inclusive fitness theory,” which described the evolution of altruism:
kin selection causes genes to increase in frequency when the genetic relatedness of a recipient to an actor multiplied by the benefit to the recipient is greater than the reproductive cost to the actor.
Belding’s ground squirrels provide a prime example of altruistic behavior. While feeding in groups, some squirrels act as sentries and watch for predators. When a predator is detected, the sentry shouts an alarm call, and the group scurries away. However, this behavior is not always advantageous from a selfish “survival of the fittest” perspective since the sentry is nearly three times more likely to be pursued by the predator due to drawing attention to herself by issuing the alarm. Despite this, the behavior is rational and understandable when viewed from an evolutionary perspective, almost as if the squirrels have read Hamilton’s paper. The squirrels are more likely to give alarm calls when close relatives are present, thus increasing the likelihood of genes being passed down to future generations. In turn, the sentry trusts that others will alert her if necessary.
Homo sapiens couldn’t have evolved without altruism and trust inside the small groups too. It was impossible for the individual to constantly stay awake and vigilant, and the world was full of dangers. People needed to watch over and ensure each other’s safety. Lack of trust meant certain death.
Small tribes developed into societies; social contract emerged. People had to trust their leaders to protect and care for them, and to interpret the agreement fairly.
Trust has been, still is, and will continue to be crucial for humanity. We desire to trust our government, parents, partners, friends and managers.
In “The Selfish Gene”, Richard Dawkins delved into the factors and requirements underlying the evolution of trust and altruistic behavior:
Because genes are selfish, a lot of the relationships among organisms in nature end up being so-called zero-sum games: there’s always one clear winner and one clear loser. When a hawk chases a dove, either the dove ends up getting eaten or the hawk starves.
Dawkins proposed the idea that genes act as “selfish” units of evolution, but the species that carry these genes function as “vehicles”. He suggested that cooperation between these vehicles in a “non-zero sum game” can be beneficial for the selfish genes.
The model of zero-sum and non-zero-sum game comes from Game Theory, a multi-disciplinary area of study “of the ways in which interacting choices of economic agents produce outcomes with respect to the preferences (or utilities) of those agents, where the outcomes in question might have been intended by none of the agents”:
A Zero-Sum game is an interaction of two or more parties in which the total gains by the parties are exactly equal to the total loss by some other parties. Typical examples are poker, the fight of two lions for dominance, chess game.
A Non-Zero-Sum game is a situation where one’s win does not necessarily mean another’s loss, and one’s loss does not necessarily mean that the other party wins. In a Non-Zero-Sum Game, all parties could gain, or all parties could lose. This is in direct contrast to a Zero-Sum Game where one party’s win necessitates another party’s loss, such as in competitive games like basketball, where if one team wins, the other automatically loses. Typical examples are: bees sacrificing themselves to protect the hive, rock climbers belaying each other, team members sharing knowledge.
Game Theory and Evolutionary Biology demonstrate how acts of trust and altruism can benefit multiple parties in a Non-Zero-Sum scenario. One example of this concept is the Trust Game, which uses visual experiments to explore different strategies for collaboration. A great illustration of the mathematical simulations of Game Theory’s behavioral models can be found at https://ncase.me/trust/.
For successful collaboration, altruism and trust are essential prerequisites.
Collaboration involves forming a partnership to generate value collectively. It requires a commitment to achieving an outcome that exceeds what would be achievable in isolation. In a similar vein, just as ground squirrels display altruistic behavior by alerting others to the presence of a predator, teammates collaborate and act altruistically by sharing their knowledge, thereby improving the overall outcome.
Collaborative work is also a Non-Zero-Sum game, meaning that the benefits derived from it are not limited to a simple exchange of resources. For instance, when a company invests in an employee’s salary, it stands to gain much more than just that dollar amount. Similarly, when an employee engages in knowledge sharing, they may receive something of even greater value in return.
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