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By Root 1571 0

both in the United States and in developing countries, using various amounts representing, in some cases, a large percentage of the subject’s monthly income (to make sure that the significance of the amount involved did not influence the outcome). Amazingly, typically 75 percent of DM1s sent some money to their unknown partners, and an even higher ratio of DM2s sent some back.11 I spoke to Zak and asked him about this counterintuitive result. “The trust game is embedded in social interaction,” he told me, “and the Nash equilibrium does not take that into account.” Nash, Zak points out, suffered from schizophrenia, a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by, among other things, social withdrawal. To some extent, Zak believes, Nash’s illness affected his economic theories. “Cost isn’t the only reason people buy product A versus product B,” Zak said. “There are any number of social, human-based reasons involved, and Nash never calculated those into his equations.”12

Zak theorizes that we trust others because doing so activates social attachment mechanisms; in other words, it seems the right thing to do. Trust appears to be driven by a sense of what to do, rather than a conscious determination of what is most profitable to do. To understand this hypothesis better, Zak performed blood tests on his subjects after they had played the trust game and made a phenomenal discovery: The more money DM2s received from DM1s, the more their oxytocin levels rose, and the more they returned to DM1s. Put another way, when you trust someone, their brain responds by making more oxytocin, which allows them to trust you in return. Reciprocity —doing unto others as they do unto you—seems therefore to be a biological function; trust begets trust. (Interestingly, Zak pointed out, roughly 2 percent within the groups did not share any of the wealth, a number roughly corresponding to the percentage of sociopaths in a population.13)

Furthermore, remember, oxytocin directly affects the areas of the brain associated with memory. When you extend trust, which is at times an unconscious behavior, you not only bathe this area of the brain with soothing chemicals, you create memories of having done so. This concurrence of activity led Zak to conclude that it is possible to restimulate and reinforce trusting behaviors over time. In other words, trust builds trust, as well, on a biological basis.

How does that translate into the modern marketplace? If trust is, as Zak explains, “a tangible, intentional act in which you cede power over resources to another person,” both sides can recognize extending trust as cooperation for potential gain. We generate feel-good hormones in the people we trust, and they reciprocate by trusting us in return. We, in turn, consciously or unconsciously acknowledge their trust with a similar biological response. Fear dissolves, cooperation ensues, and an upward spiral of mutual reinforcement thrives. We are on some level, it seems, hardwired to seek connections with others, to build biological networks to achieve greater personal gain.

THE EVOLUTION OF WHAT IS VALUABLE

Survival of the fittest is an evolutionary concept we take for granted. Yet, when it comes to humankind, what defines the fittest? Is it the strongest? When early man was walking around in animal skins and living in caves, did the biggest ones rule the littlest ones? Did they get more food or a reproductive advantage because of their size? Though this is, I think, a common assumption, the cutting edge of social anthropological thinking suggests that it may be false. If modern man is so much more than brute force and the ability to use tools, then at some point in our evolution mustn’t we have selected for other traits? What if humankind’s greatest strength is not the size of our muscles but our seemingly irrational embrace of connection and cooperation—our ability to form societies of like-minded individuals? We have already seen that we have a biological predisposition to do this and, it turns out, we have an evolutionary one as well. Like so many things