How We Evolved To Think, Judge, and Decide the Way We Do: Insights for Better Teams and Societies

In an earlier post, we explored the hidden drivers of our minds and why we think, judge, and decide the way we do.

It’s no news that our world is incredibly complex and fast-paced. And we don’t have the time, energy, or capacity to think through everything we encounter. So, we evolved to be quickly guided by our intuition, rather than our reasoning.

We rely on our intuition for quick judgment and decisions. Then we often have our reasoning serving to justify such judgment and decisions. This usually works well for us, but not always, as we are prone to biases and mistakes.

So, how did we come about this judgment and decision-making process? Well, because for our survival to pass on our genes, we evolved to be both:

• Selfish and want to look good to others rather than be good, and
• Group-oriented (good team players), when it serves us better than being selfish.

We will explore these in detail in this post. Additionally, we will also explore how to make the most of what we learn to build better teams and societies.

But before we do that, have you read the earlier post? If you haven’t, it’s highly recommended that you do so first. It sets the stage here and lays the grounds for how we can influence and be influenced by others..

Why This Judgment and Decision-Making Process

So, how did we get this weird judgment and decision-making process?

As our brains developed over time, why did we evolve an inner lawyer or spokesman rather than an inner judge or scientist?

In arguments about who did what and why, wouldn’t it have been most adaptive for our ancestors to figure out the truth, rather than using all that brain power to find evidence supporting what they wanted to believe?

Well, that depends on which you think was more important for our ancestors’ survival: truth or reputation?

The Selfish Self

In “The Selfish Gene,” Richard Dawkins proposes that…

Genes are selfish because their primary motivation is survival and replication, even if it means sacrificing the organism’s well-being.

In this regard, genetically related people can be selfless towards each other. They can cooperate to maximize their chances of survival and pass on those genes.

So, selfish genes shape people to be helpful to others only when it benefits them, and not all the time or to everyone.

Our intuition-driven judgment and decision-making process evolved to:

• Help family members survive.
• Help others who help us back.
• Maintain a good reputation in our community since others talk about our behavior.

Looking Good Rather Than Being Good

In “The Republic,” Glaucon (Plato’s brother) argues that…

People care a great deal more about appearance and reputation than about reality.

Is he right?

For a long time, our ancestors’ survival depended on their ability to get small groups to include them and trust them. So if there is any inborn drive here, it should be a drive to get others to think well of us.

To test whether we prioritize reputation, we look to Phil Tetlock. Tetlock is a leading researcher in the study of accountability, with many publications. He studied how people make decisions when they know they’ll be held accountable. Meaning they must justify their choices to others.

For example, they’re given information about a legal case and then asked to decide guilt or innocence.

Some subjects are told that they’ll have to explain their decisions to someone else. Other subjects know they won’t be held accountable by anyone.

Tetlock found that when left to their own devices, people relied on their intuition to make judgments quickly. Then, just as explained earlier, they used reasoning to defend such judgments. They were lazy, made errors, and relied on gut feelings.

But when people know they must explain themselves in advance, they:

• Engage in thoughtful reasoning.
• Think more systematically and self-critically.

They are:

• Less likely to jump to conclusions, and
• More likely to revise their beliefs in response to evidence.

Tetlock concludes that…

Conscious reasoning is carried out mainly for persuasion rather than discovery.

But Tedlock adds that we are also trying to persuade ourselves. We want to believe the things we are about to say to others. We want to look consistent with our beliefs and actions.

Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.

Glaucon was right. We care a great deal more about appearance and reputation than about reality.

We would rather look good than be good.

Not Only Selfish

Yes, indeed, people are often selfish. Many moral, political, and religious behaviors are thinly veiled ways of pursuing self-interest. Just look at the awful hypocrisy of so many politicians and spiritual leaders.

But it’s also true that people are group-oriented. We love to join teams, communities, and causes. We adopt group identities and work shoulder to shoulder with strangers towards shared goals. And we do so enthusiastically that it seems our minds were designed for teamwork.

Our intuition learns the group’s norms and forms our new normal from which it derives decisions. Our reasoning then justifies such decisions to make us look good within the group.

Note that when it’s said that human nature is selfish, it means that…

Our minds contain several mental processes that make us great at promoting our interests in competition with our peers.

When it’s said that human nature is also group-oriented, it means that…

Our minds contain various mental workings that make us great at promoting our group’s interests in competition with other groups.

We are not saints, but we are sometimes good team players.

The Team Player

So far, we have a portrait of human nature that is somewhat cynical.

We have seen that:

• Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.
• We care more about looking good than about truly being good.
• We lie, cheat, and cut ethical corners quite often when we think we can get away with it. And then we use our reasoning to manage our reputations and justify ourselves to others.
• We believe our post hoc reasoning so much that we end up self-righteously convinced of our virtue.

But this isn’t the complete story.

Yes, human nature is primarily selfish. But we also have a group-oriented overlay. Such an overlay results from natural selection simultaneously working at multiple levels. This is as suggested by Jonathan Haidt in “The Righteous Mind.”

Individuals compete with individuals, but at the same time, groups compete with groups.

Competition at the individual level rewards selfishness. Such selfishness includes some forms of strategic cooperation. Case in point, even criminals can work together to further their interests.

Likewise, competition at the group level favors groups of true team players. Team players who are willing to cooperate and work for the group’s best interest. And do so even when they could do better by slacking, cheating, or leaving the group.

These competitions pushed human nature in different directions. And gave us the strange mix of selfishness and selflessness we know today.

Indeed, we need to understand human group orientation and its origins. We may not understand morality, politics, or religion until we do so.

So, how did we become so group-oriented as to work for the group’s good, rather than just for our own advancement?

Winning Tribes

In ancient times, two tribes living in the same area sometimes came into competition. All things being equal, the tribe with more true team players succeeds over the other. True team players refer to courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members. Those who are always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other.

The advantage that disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined rivals comes mainly from each man’s confidence in his comrades. Selfish and contentious people can’t unite, and they can achieve nothing without unity.

Cohesive tribes began to function like individual organisms, competing with other organisms. Such tribes relied on the rapid judgments of their intuitions to act as a unit. With their reasoning, they craft justifications to strengthen group loyalty.

The more cohesive tribes generally won. Natural selection, thus, worked on tribes like every other organism.

Note that groups competing don’t always mean groups were at war or fighting with one another, although that was also frequent.

They were competing to be the most efficient at turning resources into offspring. Don’t forget that women and children were also important members of these groups.

Group selection does not always require war or violence. Whatever traits make a group more efficient at acquiring food and turning it into children make it more fit than its neighbors.

Group selection pulls for cooperation. It pulls for the ability to suppress selfish behaviors and spur individuals to act in ways that benefit their groups.

Yes, group-serving behaviors sometimes impose a terrible cost on outsiders (as in warfare). But, in general, group orientation focuses on improving the welfare of the in-group. And not on harming an out-group.

City States and Empires

In time, tribes conquered or cooperated with other tribes to form even larger groups. And eventually, city-states, empires, and countries as we have today.

How and why did it happen?

Many animals are social. That is, they live in groups, flocks, or herds. However, only a few have crossed the threshold and become ultra-social. That is, they live in large groups. Such large groups have some internal structure. This enables them to reap the benefits of division of labor (specialization).

Beehives and ant nests are examples of ultra-sociality, and so are human societies. They all have groups of specialists such as soldiers, scouts, and nursery attendants.

Becoming Ultra-Social

In “The Ants,” biologists Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson reported that three key features helped non-humans such as bees and ants to be ultra-social.  These include the need to:

1. Defend a shared nest plus dependable food within the searching range of the nest inhabitants,
2. Feed offspring over an extended period (which helps and gives an advantage to species that can recruit siblings or males to help mothers), and
3. Avoid intergroup conflicts.

Those same factors apply to humans. Like bees, our ancestors evolved intuitions that drove them to:

1. Protect shared nests like caves,
2. Care for and raise vulnerable children, and
3. Steer clear of rival groups.

These instincts shaped our ultra-social nature.

Over time, some groups adopted agriculture and constructed permanent homes. They then had a steady food supply that they had to defend even more vigorously.

Like bees, humans began building even more elaborate nests. In just a few thousand years, a new kind of vehicle appeared on Earth, the city-state, able to raise walls and armies. City-states and, later, empires spread rapidly. They changed many of the earth’s ecosystems and allowed human beings to dominate the world. Today’s nests are countries or nation-states.

But how did humans get each other to work for the group’s interest rather than their selfish interests within the group?

Especially given that within each tribe (group), selfish individuals (free riders) come out ahead. They share in the group’s gain while contributing little to its efforts. The bravest army wins, but within the bravest army, the few cowards who hang back are likely to survive the fight, go home alive, and become fathers.

Suppressing Selfishness

How did the early humans deal with the free rider problem?

Scientists proposed a series of “probable steps.”

The first step was the “social instinct.” In ancient times, loners were more likely to get picked off by predators than their more social, company-loving siblings. Over time, people intuitively felt a strong need to stay close to the group, as they found safety in numbers.

The second step was reciprocity. People who help others are more likely to get help when needed. Over time, it became an obligation to reciprocate favors and, hence, an intuitive desire to do so.

But the most important step, which we explored earlier, is that people are passionately concerned about the praise and blame of others.

People are obsessed with their reputation. We acquired the emotions that drive this obsession through natural selection at the individual level. Those who lacked a sense of shame or a love of glory were less likely to attract friends and mates.

The final step was sharing the same intention (goal). This refers to sharing a goal and working together to achieve it by sharing tasks to meet the goal best.

Here is an example. Two people want a quick meal from foraging (a shared intention or goal). They decide to work together by dividing tasks to achieve the goal most effectively. So, while foraging, one person could pull down a branch while the other plucks the fruit, and both share the meal.

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Shared Intentions

When early humans began to share intentions, their abilities increased dramatically. They were better able to hunt, gather, raise children, and raid their neighbors.

Everyone on the team now understands the task. They know that their partners share the same intention and the tasks they all need to do. Also, they know when a partner acted in a way that impeded success or hogged the spoils. And they react negatively to such violations.

Shared intentionality led to our capacity to treat duties and principles as sacred. We:

• Learn and conform to social norms (including deferring to authority),
• Feel and share group-related emotions, and
• Ultimately, create and obey social institutions.

When you put these steps together, you get evolved humans for whom free riding is no longer so attractive. Selfish genes begin to craft relatively selfless group members who constitute a supremely selfish group.

Indeed, the most effective groups have many ways of suppressing selfishness.

For example, a real army greatly values honor, loyalty, and country. The coward is not the most likely to make it home and father children. He is most likely to get beaten up, left behind, or shot in the back for committing sacrilege. And if he does make it home alive, his reputation will repel women and potential employers.

Team Before Self – Sometimes

So, we are often group-oriented rather than selfish, especially in matters that are:

• Moral,
• Religious, and
• Political.

We can believe almost anything that supports our team, and we can deploy our reasoning skills to show commitment to our team.

According to Haidt:

We ask, “Can I believe it?” when we want to believe something, but “Must I believe it?” when we don’t.

Then, we search for supporting evidence, and if we find even a single piece of pseudo-evidence, such as misleading statistics, we can stop thinking. Now we have permission to believe or not. We have a justification, in case anyone asks, as the social intuitionist model suggests.

In the past, many political scientists assumed that people vote selfishly. They assumed people choose the candidate or policy that will benefit them the most. But decades of research on public opinion have concluded that self-interest is a weak predictor of policy preferences.

Instead, people care about their groups, whether those are racial, regional, religious, or political.

The political scientist Don Kinder summarizes the findings like this:

“In matters of public opinion, citizens seem to be asking themselves not ‘What’s in it for me?’ but rather ‘What’s in it for my group?”

Our politics is group-oriented, not selfish.

So, how do we create effective teams and ethical societies if people within groups can pull in different directions?

Accountability is Key

We are champions of cooperation beyond kinship. We primarily achieve this by establishing both formal and informal accountability systems. We are:

• Good at holding others accountable for their actions, and
• Skilled at navigating through a world in which others hold us accountable for our own.

Remember Phil Tetlock? He defines accountability as follows:

“The explicit expectation that one will be called upon to justify one’s beliefs, feelings, or actions to others.”

We expect people to reward or punish us based on how well we justify ourselves. Note that everything falls apart when:

• Nobody’s answerable to anybody.
• Slackers and cheaters go unpunished.

We should make the most of accountability to align our intuitions and reasoning for the betterment of teams and societies.

Conclusion

To conclude, our evolved judgment and decision-making process, driven by selfish genes and group-oriented instincts, shapes how we influence and are influenced by others. Hence, our next post is mastering influence because cooperation is our superpower.