Trust Cues

I'm not sure I believe in Arnold Kling's entire argument on trust cues

When people in business meet for the first time to discuss a transaction, they often exchange what I call "trust cues" in order to reduce mutual suspicion. For example, they may recite empty phrases from popular business books, such as "win-win," "synergy," "principles," "customer-driven," or "raising the bar."

Nicholas Wade provides a readable, wide-ranging survey of the impact of recent advances in genetics on anthropology. In one chapter, he argues that the origins of what I observe in business behavior can be found in early religious rituals. Religions produce trust cues. Trust cues are necessary for large societies and trade among strangers to emerge. They serve to protect people from cheaters and liars.

What I am going to suggest in this essay is that political beliefs can serve the function of trust cues. Political beliefs may have at best a tenuous empirical basis, but they function to demonstrate one's membership in a trusted group.

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.

So far, so good. I'm not good at using these "trust cues", for whatever reason, or mine aren't common currency (I didn't see any of the Lord of the Rings movies or the Titanic). Most Americans like the local sports team ("How 'bout them Yankees?"), and liberal academics love to dump on Bush, Republicans, and conservatives, which I think is silly. But then he says that

The most trustworthy groups are groups where membership is valuable and excommunication is costly. They are groups that monitor the behavior of their members closely.

I'm not so sure. But there is much to agree with here:

Although empiricism has become a standard philosophy in the West, dogma persists. I believe that the main reason that non-verifiable ideas survive is that they serve as trust cues. People still need to demonstrate their commitment to membership in groups, and recitation of dogma is a low-cost method of doing so.

The actual consequences of political policies are rarely discussed. Instead people tend to accuse their opponents 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.