Maggie's Farm

On Friday morning a patient told me that he liked to hire people who are in AA because he knows that they struggle with honesty, and take the subject seriously - and often know more first-hand about dishonesty than most.

So thanks to Assistant Village Idiot for noting a relevant piece by the always interesting Kling at TCS on the anthropological subject of "trust cues" in human relationships and especially in affiliative groups (tribes), That's Your Cue.

Are humans tribal? You bet they are. And it often makes good sense to be.

Trust cues are our ways of indicating that we are members of a group, or tribe, and that it is important for us to be a member in good standing. In a sense, my patient took AA "membership" as a trust cue, because he knows they talk about honesty all the time in AA.

My favorite example of a trust cue which is ceremonially acknowledged is the "made man" in the Mafia: the guys know they can fear and trust him because he has blood on his hands. A similar example might be admission to any exclusive club.

But trust cues aren't always rational or reliable. For example, I have a bias towards trusting the intentions of serious Christians but, as far as I know, serious Christians are as morally flawed as everyone else. I suppose I'd like to believe that we, like the AA "members," worry more about how we treat others.

Thus trust cues do not necessarily mean "trust" in a moral sense, but more "trust that we're on the same page;" that we view the world somewhat similarly, and/or that we share enough similar life experience to constitute some sort of group membership.

When I attend a psychoanalytic meeting, I know it's my "club:"  mere attendance indicates some fundamental interest in unconscious processes. When I go to my church, I know I'm with my "tribe:" we are all interested enough in Christ to show up. And, come to think about it - if you really want to see a trust cue festival, attend a Dartmouth alumni Christmastime cocktail party: you have never seen so much green conviviality since St. Patrick's Day in NYC.

What Kling does, in his discussion of Wade's book Before the Dawn, is to note the ways in which dogma (as opposed to truth) is used or abused to indicate group membership.

Wade says that the evolutionary value of trust cues is that they facilitate peaceful interactions among strangers. When I offer a trust cue, I am saying that even though we do not know one another, I am a member of a trustworthy group. I value my membership in that group, and I know that lying to or cheating another member of that group could cause me to be excommunicated from the group. Since you are also a member of the group, you can trust me not to lie to you or to cheat you.

However,

...political beliefs serve primarily as trust cues. For example, those who favor an increase in the minimum wage are sending trust cues to people on the Left, and those who oppose an increase in the minimum wage are sending trust cues to people on the Right.

The actual consequences of raising the minimum wage are rarely discussed. In other words, political debates often ignore what I call Type C arguments (from empiricism) and turn instead to type M arguments, which accuse one's opponent of belonging to an outcast group. The reason for this is that people are not trying to persuade each other rationally. Instead, they are using trust cues to indicate that failure to agree implies excommunication from the group.

It has been my view that the current fad of getting upset about global warming is a trust cue, and little more. What it actually proclaims is "I am virtuous and I care a lot, and I don't mind more government control over things." The science, and the real empirical debate, lies outside the cue structure. Assertion of tribal membership is what such political postures are all about.

Read Kling's piece here, and Asst. Village Idiot's comments here. Interesting stuff.