Evolution and Trust.

Is the ability to trust a survival skill?

Victoria Tronina

While conducting an interview yesterday, I asked the candidate what new piece of knowledge he found was finding exciting, he said a study he read about microevolution in chickens. Quick summary of the article, chickens that were put in the dark after a couple of days adapted to being in the dark. The chicks they hatched after that had a gene that made them able to survive in the dark innately without the need for adaptation.

I found that interesting. After the interview, I kept thinking about what he said and remembered that I had written about evolution and natural selection and our ability to adapt before. 

For some reason, I started seeing evolution and adaptation through the lens of trust. Maybe because I had been preoccupied with the issue of trust all week. The two seem so disparate and I was even asking myself where I was going with this and wondering what possible correlations there could be between evolution( natural selection) and trust.

After I allowed myself to look more closely at how natural selection ensures a species has the traits it needs to survive, I decided that indeed trust might just be a survival skill. 

Natural selection is the process through which populations of living organisms adapt and change. Individuals in a population are naturally variable, meaning that they are all different in some ways. This variation means that some individuals have traits better suited to the environment than others. (National Geographic). Here is a simple natural selection explainer video

For a specie to adapt to an ever-changing world or environment, it almost has to assess all its skills or traits and metaphorically put them in a yes or no bucket. The question is, “do I trust trait x to ensure my survival in the world?” Any trait that isn’t trusted to do that is “cut”. Those that can be trusted are transferred to the next generation. 

Can you see what I mean? 

Isn't this on some level how trust kind of manifests in relationships? Once trust in a person or relationship or even in a thing is questionable, that is the beginning of the end.

Eg is you can’t trust a chair to carry your weight that chair is “dead” to you no matter how fancy it looks. 

Almost everything we do is filtered through the lens of trust. 

Do I trust that I can survive if I jumped out of this plane?

Do I trust this person enough to spend the rest of my life with them?

Do I trust this team member to hold up their side of the deal and deliver our part of the work on time? 

Do I trust that this train will come in time? 

Human being thanks to our reptilian(primitive) brain that wants to keep us alive, is risk averse. So an inability to trust equates to risk (red amber lights blaring noisily asking you to flee from that situation) 

Here is an excerpt from David DeStano’s book; The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.

“In the end, what emerged are not only new insights into how to detect the trustworthiness of others, but also an entirely new way to think about how trust influences our lives, our success, and our interactions with those around us. . . .

One of the most profound … is that trust isn’t only a concern that emerges at big moments in our lives. It’s not relevant just to signing a contract, making a large purchase, and exchanging wedding vows. … Whether we realize it or not, issues of trust permeate our days from the time we’re born to the time we die, and it’s often what’s below the surface of consciousness that can have the greatest influence on a life well lived.

Our minds didn’t develop in a social vacuum. Humans evolved living in social groups, and that means the minds of our ancestors were sculpted by the challenges posed by living with others on whom they depended. Chief among those challenges was the need to solve dilemmas of trust correctly. And it’s precisely because of this fact that the human mind constantly tries to ascertain the trustworthiness of others while also weighing the need to be trustworthy itself. Your conscious experience may not correspond with this fact, but again that’s because much of the relevant computations are automatic and take place outside of awareness.”

While trust is mostly directed at others, there is also trust in one’s self. Can you trust yourself to be true to your values? To always try to make the right decisions for yourself. To take care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually? 

Here is what David DeSteno has to say as again;

“Although cooperation and vulnerability indeed require two parties, no one ever said that the two parties had to be different people. On the contrary, the parties can be the same person at different times. Can the present you trust the future you not to cheat on your diet by bingeing on chocolate cake? Not to cheat on an exam? Not to cheat on your spouse? Not to go gambling again?…

Each of us is never just an observer trying to ascertain whether someone else is to be trusted; we’re also targets of observation ourselves. The same forces that determine whether someone else will be honest or loyal also impinge on our minds. Assessing the trustworthiness of another and acting trustworthy ourselves, then, are simply two sides of the same coin. Understanding how to predict and control the flip of that coin is what this book is all about”

Despite my discovery that evolution can be said to be about trust and natural selection was very clinical in the way it cut off traits that weren't needed because it was a matter of whether the specie can long enough to have children and ensure it doesn't go extinct, I know that life isn't black and which and most of the greatest experience or gains in life is sometimes at the other end of “trust aka risk”. Do you open yourself up to love? Do you take that leap, do you join that startup etc?

So there you have it, another dose of the inner workings of my mind. Do you agree that evolution is related to trust or am I just “talking” my own?

Keep going,

Ije