Instead when B completes the transaction by giving A the good Ht+1, A does not return the promise but mentally credits B with goodwill. Goodwill increases the likelihood that A will trust B in the future.

– Friend-or-foe intentionality priming in an extensive form trust game

Criticality, in this context, does not refer to the dominant notion that something is right or wrong, biased or unbiased, true or false. It is an attempt to understand origins of assumptions and implications.

– Soft versus critical global citizenship education

How long does it take to trust someone? Are people naturally trusting? Is trust useful in our daily interactions or is it a weakness? At higher levels, students are taught to assess for themselves the credibility of various information sources. This implies that some sources are not as trustworthy as others. Assuming that sources of information are only going to increase, should students now begin with scepticism and have sources fight to earn their trust? Would this also affect their interactions with strangers?

Trustworthiness attracts goodwill. Knowing this, psychologists and others have been studying for years how to come across trustworthy. There is so much information on this field now, it has become an art and science. This means that all someone who wishes to engender trust for any purpose, commercial and otherwise, has to do, is study the explicitly stated techniques. This is the science part. However, as Axe likes to say, A lot of guys watch Bruce Lee. Doesn’t mean they can do Karate. This is where the art comes in. It is not enough to simply read the techniques; one also has to spend time practising and figuring out exactly when to do how much of what to get best results.

So, students are growing up in a world where they are faced with both a multiplicity of views and an increasing sophistication in the manner these ‘truths’ are presented. Accordingly, it is becoming more difficult to trust at the first instance. Is there still a place for trust?

Burnham and others (2000), in a study on game theory suggest, “Other things being equal you prefer to be friends with someone” not because people are “sentimental” but because, “in a repeat interaction world” where people can make the lives of others easier or harder, it is better to have a friend than a foe.

They tested this idea by pairing randomly, strangers to play a game in which they could either be both the better for it or leave one much worse off. In this game, there were two players who had to take turns to make choices to end up with a sum of money each. Players were shown beforehand the routes they could take to reach the final outcome.

There were two best possible outcomes, X and Y. X was when both players received $8. Y was when both received $10. So, any two players could see clearly what they had to do to reach either X or Y before the game even began.

However, there was a catch. To reach the ($10, $10) outcome, the player who moved first had to be vulnerable. If the first mover chose to move towards ($10, $10), the other player could choose to make a move which would leave him with $12 and the first mover with only $6. The first mover therefore had to trust that the other player would reciprocate his goodwill and make the cooperative choice which would award both $10 instead of ($6, $12).

If the first mover was not willing to trust that the other player would reciprocate his goodwill, he could make a move which led to both receiving $8. In this situation, the only choice the second mover had was to finish the game at ($8, $8). Doing anything else would have seen him very much the poorer for it.

The game was played with 312 participants in two formats. In the first format, players only played one round. In the second, each player played 10 rounds, each time with a stranger. Researchers had wanted to test if calling the other player, a partner or an opponent made a difference in the way the game was played. In some games, players were told they would be engaging with a partner and in some others that they would be against an opponent.

It was found that it did not matter, when only one round was played, whether the counterpart was called partner or opponent. In both cases, the same percentage of first movers chose to be vulnerable. This suggested that for those who saw benefits of cooperation, it did not matter who they were dealing with. Second movers were almost twice as likely to reciprocate when they thought of the other as partner.

When playing ten rounds with different players, first movers were more likely to move towards ($10, $10) when the counterpart was called partner. Second movers were more likely to cooperate and finish at ($10, $10) when the counterpart was called partner.

When players thought of each other as partners with a shared goal, they were both the richer for it. The second mover could have gotten more than $10 by leaving the first mover much poorer. However, by doing so, he would have lost something else, not quantifiable. This game was played with strangers who were unlikely to be dealt with again. The dynamic would change if there were to be repeated interactions.

Three other findings are interesting. When playing ten rounds, first movers were more willing to be vulnerable in the first five rounds before moving towards ($8, $8) from rounds 6-10. Also, second movers were more willing to reciprocate by finishing the game at ($10, $10) in the first five rounds. Regardless of if the counterpart was called partner or opponent, reciprocation declined from rounds 6-10. An overwhelming proportion of first movers (regardless of label) chose to move towards ($8, $8), implying they were not comfortable with being exposed to loss in both formats.

Participants on the whole were more cautious than trusting when dealing with strangers. This resulted in both parties getting lesser albeit equal amounts. Viewing the other as partner resulted in better outcomes for both though this required acceptance of some vulnerability. Over time, for some reason, cooperation appeared less attractive.

Caution is not a bad thing. It encourages all parties in a transaction to take the other’s legitimate concerns into account and take steps to reassure with a view to foster better outcomes for all.

Indeed, this is why students are taught to think critically and exposed to various sources. Andreotti (2014) explains that critical thinking does not mean asking if something is true, false, biased or unbiased. This will become more and more difficult given increasing sophistication of what and who they interact with.

Students trained to think critically would instead, ask the right questions and be fair-minded and grounded in their analysis without being tossed hither and thither by every forceful argument on opposing sides. To ask such questions, they would have to be willing to understand fully the concepts involved in what is being presented to them.

Training in critical thinking necessarily means exposure to controversial issues around the world. Given enough exposure, students might begin thinking the world is a jungle and that there is no benefit in trusting, that every action must be questioned. They would view every other as opponent. This is precisely the situation critical thinking aims to avoid. Critical thinking, done right, fosters partnership. This is done by asking for example the difference between what they see in controversies, the lived experience of those involved in such controversies and their own experience.

For example, a student may read that in some school cultures, the student body is divided by distinct identities. One is a sportsperson and mixes only with sportspeople. The other is an artist and mixes only with artists. Anyone who doesn’t fit into any distinct category drifts around like a ghost along the school corridors. Reading this might cause some unease if one sees himself as neither a sportsperson nor an artist. However, merely because this is the case in one school culture elsewhere does not mean this is also his reality in his environment. He merely has to look around to see how his school is organised.

Knowing that the interlocutor is able to ask the right questions discourages attempts to hoodwink, encouraging instead, equitable and optimal outcomes. A teacher who trains his class to think critically would not also attempt to get away for example with favouritism. If such perceptions arise, he would attempt to explain why something was done the way it was, knowing full well, the thinking capacity of his charges.

If in such a situation, the students view the teacher as an opponent, they would end up being unable to process dispassionately, being already invested in wanting to ‘win’. As the game theory experiment showed, it is quite natural to want to win especially after repeated rounds. Students might think it boring to always be cooperative especially if the classes on the same level erupt in noise regularly.

The jungle is an exciting place full of sound and fury arising from clashes between opponents. In these clashes, to win is to cause loss and so choices cannot be optimal. The jungle left on its own would not evolve to become a garden, an oasis of peace. Tranquillity is achieved through good, old, cooperation.

It takes partners to create and maintain gardens.

The Brain Dojo