Rethinking Trust: A radical new vision -From Molecular Origins to Global Systems
In episode 96 Erik Schoppen discusses his forthcoming book “Trust Reset: A Radical New Vision on Trust” and the need for a new perspective on trust theories. He believes that traditional theories are insufficient in the face of rapid technological advancements and global changes. Schoppen emphasizes that his upcoming book integrates new insights from biological and artificial research, offering a comprehensive view on trust that spans from its molecular origins to complex social and digital systems.
Erik explains that trust has evolved as a survival mechanism, starting from early neural networks in ancient organisms. This evolution has led to the development of three biological forms of trust: cognitive, affective, and conative (behavioral) attitudes, known as the CAB model. He elaborates that these attitudes play a role at various levels, from self-trust to interactions in social networks, and larger organizational structures, to system and societal trust.
He highlights the need to understand trust as expanding networks that increase in complexity., describing trust as information that flows through these networks and levels, allowing for the measurement of trust attitudes in various contexts.
He also introduces the concept of the circular trust loop, consisting of three transformational processes: regaining, rebuilding, and renewing trust. These processes help restore trust in individuals and societies, especially in the face of current global conflicts and uncertainties.
Addressing the integration of biological aspects of trust, Schoppen acknowledges Paul Zak’s research on the neurochemical oxytocin but emphasizes the need for a broader, multidimensional approach. He introduces his “integrated multilevel trust framework”, which considers trust from a molecular to a global scale, addressing challenges such as the climate crisis. He further breaks down the cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses that shape trust today. He provides examples, such as hiring decisions, to illustrate how these responses influence our interactions and decisions based on trust.
Discussing the future of trust and AI, Erik raises concerns about whether AI will trust humans rather than the other way around. He explains that AI processes information much faster and more logically than humans, potentially perceiving us as untrustworthy and irrational. This shift necessitates a new field of research on trust in the context of AI.
The book offers various trust levels
(…) in the book we walk you through several trust levels that increase in complexity and where we use different networks for different survival strategies. So for example, one of the differences is that what we call trust developed in organisms out of self-protection, which are survival mechanisms dating back around 300 million years ago in the first neural networks. And this shaped the wiring for our later developed three biological forms of trust. This is the behavioral, this is the affective and the cognitive trust attitudes. We also known this as the CAB model. So the CAB, and I explained this in my book as well. These trust attitudes play a role in self-trust just the first level of the framework, but also in other levels and in this way you can measure them in all the levels. So for example, the second level is that we interact socially with each other in dyads and in groups. And this is just another survival strategy to cope with the changes in our environment. And therefore you need to trust each other on a social level. Well, this is already known, but you also need to trust each other in social networks where you had long lasting relationships based on kinship, reciprocity, and the willingness to share risk so we could hunt together and barter goods, share knowledge and resources. And this all happened in what we call the cognitive revolution.
Circular Trust Process
Changes in trust have always existed on a personal level, social level, or on a systemic level, and even on a societal scale. But what these changes have in common is that they all share the same circular trust process. This is a cyclical process, which I call the circular trust loop in my book, and it has three transformational processes. It’s the regain process how to get trust back when it’s lost, the rebuilding process, what kind of tools are you going to use to rebuild the trust for the population and then you have the renew process. This is when you predict the future based on these trust processes. It helps to regain trust for example, if you start with already worked in the past, these are the best practices and what people are familiar with. And this is the initial step that can happen fast depending on the severity of the damage that was done. For example, in society at the moment, there is a lot of conflicts going on in the world, and what you can see is that people are looking for new ways to restore trust in our societies. So this whole process of regaining trust is actually building a foundation to rebuild trust for that population.
Paul Zak
During the interview reference is made to an earlier interview with Paul Zak “Trust and the Moral Molecule” (27 November 2021)
Book details “Trust Reset
More details about the (upcoming) book by Erik Schoppen can be found on this website: https://www.erikschoppen.com/trustreset/
Transcript Interview Erik Schoppen
YouTube – Listen to the interview while reading subtitles
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