Trust, Toddlers, and Wikipedia: Humans as Natural-Born Cooperators
My interview with Dan Gardner for his new book with Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales
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Trust is the foundation of everything good in society. Without it, we’d never cooperate - and without cooperation, we could never have nice things. We’d never fork over our hard-earned cash for bread in case the baker didn’t keep up his end of the bargain; we’d never get in an Uber in case the driver abducted us; and we’d never read a scientific paper without checking every reference for ourselves.
But where do trust and cooperation come from? Are humans naturally untrusting, selfish brutes who only cooperate under threat of punishment? Or are we naturally trusting, cooperative animals, with governments and institutions merely amplifying what’s already there?
In 2024, Dan Gardner interviewed me about these and related topics for his new book with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. The book, published late last year, is called The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last. Using Wikipedia as a core example, it explores how cultivating trust within teams, communities, and organizations can make seemingly impossible collective efforts succeed.
In our conversation, Dan and I explored the evolutionary roots of cooperation, the evidence that even babies prefer helpers over hinderers, and why human beings - capable of both incredible cruelty and extraordinary good - lean toward creation more than destruction. What follows is a lightly edited version of our exchange.
Dan Gardner: “Hobbes said the strong hand of a ruler is what keeps people from victimizing each other and allows them to, instead, cooperate. In the absence of that strong hand, [life] is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ Was Hobbes right about human nature?”
Steve Stewart-Williams: I’d give Hobbes a mixed report card for that quote. He was wrong about humans being solitary. We’re a highly social animal, and always have been. That means that we’ve always been highly cooperative. Lacking fangs, claws, or gorilla-sized muscles, we wouldn’t have survived otherwise. Not only that, but we wouldn’t have evolved the capacity for language or theory of mind if we were always off by ourselves with no one to talk to or interact with.
At the same time, Hobbes was right that societies without governments tend to be more plagued with violence than those with them. That’s because, although we’re naturally cooperative, we’re also naturally capable of selfishness and violence. Governments tend to clamp down on violence within their borders and to protect people from each other, at least to some degree. And when that happens, it can let our natural cooperativeness soar to new heights. After all, people are more likely to cooperate when they’re less worried about someone coming along and stealing the fruits of their cooperation.
So, although we’re naturally cooperative, we can establish social systems and incentive structures that allow us to achieve “unnatural” levels of cooperation.
In calling them unnatural, I don’t mean to imply this is a bad thing; it’s a very good thing. But it’s not what we’d find in our natural environment - the environment in which we evolved.
Dan Gardner: “The argument from evolution seems strong but let’s leave that aside. Is there evidence today of a natural tendency to cooperate? (I’m thinking of studies of babies, that sort of thing.) What are the best bits of evidence you would point to say, ‘yes, we’re born wired that way’?"
Steve Stewart-Williams: There’s plenty of evidence that we’re naturally a cooperative animal, rather than just a smart animal that figured out how to cooperate in the same way that we figured out how to do agriculture.
One piece of evidence is that wherever human beings are found, they engage in extensive cooperation. There are no credible records of places or times where everyone’s an island, and sociality goes no further than the mother-offspring bond. If we’re not natural-born cooperators, why so little variation?
Another piece of evidence is that cooperation is found in many other species, with higher levels of cooperation in species with larger groups, bigger brains, and more sophisticated communication abilities. We’re the extreme of that trend: We have the largest groups, the biggest brains, and the most sophisticated communication abilities of all the primates - and we’re also the most cooperative. Given that we’re part of a trend that, for other species, clearly has an evolutionary origin, it would be strange if it didn’t have an evolutionary origin for us.
On top of that, our cooperative tendencies emerge earlier and with less coaxing than tendencies and abilities that are clearly cultural inventions - things like reading, writing, and formal mathematics. In experiments, human toddlers will spontaneously help a researcher who “accidentally” drops something, whereas chimp toddlers won’t. And even babies notice who cooperates and who doesn’t, and strongly prefer the former.
All of this fits more easily with the idea that cooperation is a human birthright - an inbuilt propensity - rather than just something we invented.
I probably wouldn’t say that we’re born wired to cooperate; cooperation has to develop. But the development of cooperation seems to be part of our natural maturational program, in the same way that the development of walking and talking are.
Dan Gardner: “Last question. I hate to ask this one but I know many people will think it: Cooperation is good! Cooperation is neighbours coming together to raise a barn. That sort of thing. So if cooperation is human nature, why is there so much war, slavery, and other forms of cruelty and evil in human history? Isn’t that a contradiction?”
Steve Stewart-Williams: Great question. I don’t think it is a contradiction, for two reasons.
First, I don’t think there’s any contradiction in the idea that we’re capable of cooperation and capable of selfishness and cruelty. Natural selection (and for that matter, culture) has equipped us with a range of tools for a range of purposes - some of them nice; some of them not-so-nice. It’s no more a contradiction that we’re capable of both cooperation and selfishness than that painters have both paint brushes and paint remover in their toolkits.
It feels like a contradiction because we always want to know “Are people ultimately good or evil?” But that might be like wanting to know “Are people ultimately hungry or satiated?” Both are inbuilt propensities, and which gets the upper hand depends on the situation.
The second reason I don’t think it’s a contradiction is that I don’t think cooperation is good! More precisely, I don’t think it’s inherently good - or inherently bad, or inherently anywhere in between. It all depends what it’s used for. When we cooperate to raise a barn - or reduce extreme poverty or prevent animal cruelty - it’s great. When we cooperate to build concentration camps or gulags, it’s terrible. Cooperation is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for good or ill.
Having said all that, I would add that, although we’re capable of both cooperation and cruelty, most of us prefer cooperation most of the time, at least when we’re dealing with ingroup members. And although cooperation can be used to create or destroy, on balance we’ve probably done more of the former - which is why, despite all the terrible things we’ve done over the ages, we’ve still managed to build this amazing civilization.
You can learn more about The Seven Rules of Trust here.
You can check out more of my interviews here.
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Steve
I supported Wikipedia for several years with regular annual donations. No longer. The idea behind Wikipedia is excellent, but it has gone of the rails so badly that were it in my power I would destroy it. There is a cabal of "editors" who are pushing an ideological viewpoint that disgusts me and should disgust others if they were aware. This group has made it impossible to correct their dirty work. To make matters worse, AIs do much of their "learning" on Wikipedia then spread its propaganda. Read the article on "Gaza genocide" for all the proof needed, but there is much more.