The Anthropology of Trust: From Tribe to Anonymity

1.1. Trust as an Evolutionary Adaptation

Humans emerged as a biological species for whom survival was impossible without cooperation. We are not the fastest, not the strongest, not the most enduring. We have no fangs, no shell, no venom. Our primary weapon is a brain capable of complex coordination with other humans. And that coordination requires trust.

1.1.1. The Neuroscience of Trust

Our brains contain special mechanisms responsible for trust. Oxytocin—the hormone released during hugging, breastfeeding, sexual intimacy—also plays a key role in forming trust. Research shows that administering oxytocin increases people’s willingness to trust strangers in economic games.

Neuroscientist Paul Zak called oxytocin the “moral molecule.” But that’s not quite accurate. Oxytocin is the molecule of connection. It makes us feel that another person is “one of us.” And we trust “our own.”

Trust, therefore, has biological rather than purely cultural origins. We are born with it.

1.1.2. The Paradox of the Newborn

A newborn human is the most helpless creature in the animal kingdom. A foal stands within an hour. A kitten opens its eyes within a week. A human infant cannot roll over, cannot hold its head up, cannot obtain food. It is absolutely, totally dependent on adults.

And it survives only because it trusts. It doesn’t know what deception is. It doesn’t suspect it could be abandoned. Its baseline state is openness to the world and to people.

Psychologists call this “basic trust.” Erik Erikson, who developed the theory of psychosocial development, considered the formation of basic trust the first and most important task of infancy. If a child receives care, warmth, predictability—they grow up feeling the world is generally safe. If not—the world is perceived as a threat.

This basic trust never disappears. Even the most cynical person, who has endured countless betrayals, retains deep down a need to trust. They’ve just learned to protect themselves. They’ve built armor. But beneath the armor is the same openness they had in their first months of life.

1.1.3. Trust as an Evolutionary Advantage

Why did evolution create such a vulnerable creature? The answer is simple: trust is a superpower. Groups where people trusted each other had a colossal advantage.

Imagine two ancient hunters. One hunts alone. The second hunts in a group of five, where each person is confident that others will cover them. Who kills the mammoth? Who brings back more meat? Who survives a clash with a neighboring tribe?

Trust enables:

• Cooperation — doing what’s impossible alone
• Specialization — one makes arrowheads, another sews clothes, a third hunts
• Delegation — entrusting to another what you’re not good at yourself
• Creating a shared future — making plans that extend beyond a single day

Without trust, there is no society. Without trust, there is no civilization.

1.1.4. The Dark Side of Trust

But this superpower has a dark side. Trust makes us vulnerable. Those we trust can betray us. And our evolutionary history is full of such betrayals.

The human brain developed powerful defenses against deception. We learned to detect lies—through micro-expressions, tone of voice, inconsistencies in stories. We learned to suspect. We learned to verify. We learned not to take words at face value.

And here lies the central paradox of human nature:

A human being is born with an open heart. But life teaches them to close it. Distrust is not the default setting. It is armor we put on to survive.

All our cultural experience is the layering of this armor. And the more betrayals we endure, the thicker it becomes. But beneath it remains the same desire to trust that we had in childhood.

1.2. Dunbar’s Number: The Limits of Natural Trust

In the 1990s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar made a discovery that forever changed our understanding of human social nature. He studied the relationship between neocortex size and social group size in primates. And found a linear correlation.

Extrapolating the data to humans, Dunbar arrived at a number: 150.

This is the maximum size of a group in which a person can maintain stable social relationships based on personal knowledge. It’s now called Dunbar’s Number.

1.2.1. What the Number 150 Means

In a group of up to 150 people, everyone knows everyone. You know who can do what, who to trust, who talks too much, who is reliable. Reputation is transparent. Lies are quickly exposed. The violator is expelled.

The number 150 appears in various contexts:

• Size of a typical pre-industrial village
• Size of a Roman centuria (military unit)
• Size of a company that can be managed without formal hierarchy
• Size of a choir where everyone can know each other by name

1.2.2. Tribal Trust: How It Worked

For 95% of human history (and if counting from the appearance of Homo sapiens, 99.9%), people lived in groups of up to 150. This wasn’t a choice—it was a biological necessity.

Tribal trust was built on:

• Personal knowledge. Everyone knew everyone. You couldn’t lie about what you could do—it was obvious.
• Repeated interactions. People interacted not once, but for a lifetime. Deceive today—lose tomorrow’s benefit.
• Reputational expulsion. The violator was expelled from the tribe. In conditions where survival alone was impossible, this was equivalent to a death sentence.
• Kinship. Everyone in the tribe was related. Deceive a relative—harm your own genes (in evolutionary terms).

Tribal trust worked flawlessly. Within the group. But it didn’t extend to outsiders.

1.2.3. The Double Standard: Us vs. Them

For ancient humans, the division between “us” and “them” was absolute. You could trust “us.” You could deceive, kill, rob “them.” This wasn’t cruelty—it was survival.

Anthropologists find traces of this division in all cultures. The word “human” in many languages means “member of our tribe.” Everyone else is not quite human.

We inherited this double standard. And today, in the 21st century, it persists. We trust “our own”—family, friends, colleagues, compatriots. And we don’t trust “others.” The problem is, the modern world is a world of “others.” We interact with thousands of people we don’t know personally. And the mechanism of tribal trust has stopped working.

1.3. The Evolution of Trust Mechanisms

Humanity couldn’t remain within tribal structures. Population growth, trade development, the emergence of cities—all required interaction with strangers. New mechanisms of trust were needed that would work not on personal knowledge but on something else.

1.3.1. The Religious Oath: Fear of Higher Powers

The first such mechanism was the religious oath.

When two people from different tribes wanted to make a deal, they called upon gods as witnesses. The oath was sacred. The violator risked not only earthly punishment but eternal damnation, torment in the afterlife, the wrath of higher powers.

In Ancient Greece, treaties between city-states were sealed with oaths. Athenians and Spartans, signing peace, made sacrifices to gods and pronounced curses upon themselves if they violated. In medieval Europe, the feudal oath (homage) was a religious act. The vassal placed his hands in the lord’s and swore on the Gospels. Breaking the oath was considered not just betrayal but a sin, leading to excommunication.

The religious oath worked because:

• Faith was universal and sincere
• Violation had consequences not only in this life
• The community (the church) monitored compliance

But this mechanism weakened with secularization, the Reformation, the Enlightenment. People stopped fearing hell. And oaths stopped working.

1.3.2. The Written Contract and the State

The next step was the emergence of the written contract and the state as guarantor.

If the oath relied on fear of gods, the contract relied on fear of the state. The contract violator knew: they would be summoned to court, forced to compensate losses, and if they persisted—imprisoned.

The written contract provided what the oath couldn’t:

• Formalization. Terms clearly written, no room for interpretation
• Provability. The contract could be presented in court
• Enforcement. The state has a monopoly on violence and can compel performance

The state became the primary guarantor of trust. We trust a stranger because we know: if they deceive us, we can go to court, and the state will protect our rights.

But this mechanism, too, has cracked.

1.3.3. The Crisis of the State as Guarantor

The state proved to be an imperfect guarantor for several reasons:

• Corruption. Judges can be bribed, laws written in the interest of the powerful
• Slowness. Courts drag on for years. Lawyers are expensive.
• Bureaucracy. To protect your rights, you must navigate dozens of institutions
• Unreliability of the state itself. The state can change laws, expropriate property, devalue currency. Who protects against the state?

In the 20th century, we witnessed states breaking their obligations: expropriations, hyperinflation, arbitrary arrests. Trust in the state as guarantor collapsed.

1.3.4. Informal Reputation

Parallel to state mechanisms, informal ones existed. Merchant guilds, professional communities, credit bureaus—all were attempts to create trust without relying on the state.

In medieval Europe, a merchant expelled from a guild lost the ability to trade. No one would lend them money, insure their goods, or enter into deals. Reputation within the community was more important than any formal documents.

In 19th-century America, private credit bureaus collected information on the reliability of merchants and farmers. Dun & Bradstreet, founded in 1841, still exists today.

On early 20th-century exchanges, deals worth millions were made verbally, on a “gentleman’s word.” A violator instantly lost their license and became an outcast.

But this mechanism only worked in small, closed communities where everyone knew everyone. In the global, anonymous world of the 20th century, it failed.

1.4. The Contemporary Crisis of Credibility

Today, we find ourselves in a unique historical situation. All three traditional mechanisms of trust—tribal, religious, state—have weakened or stopped working. And a new one has not yet been created.

1.4.1. Anonymity and Impunity

The internet allows us to interact with people around the world. But it also created the problem of anonymity. You can create a fake account, cause harm, disappear, and create a new one. Reputation, once a person’s “skin,” has become something easily discarded.

Platforms tried to create their own reputation systems (eBay seller ratings, Uber driver ratings), but these ratings:

• Belong to the platform, not the person
• Don’t transfer between platforms
• Can be changed or deleted at the platform’s discretion

As a result, we have a world where you can be a scammer on Amazon, have a perfect rating on Uber, and start fresh on a new platform.

1.4.2. The Information Explosion

We’re drowning in information. Every day, a flood of news, articles, posts, videos. But quantity isn’t quality. And, more importantly, the volume of information makes verification impossible.

There used to be a limited range of sources (newspapers, radio, television). They could be verified, trusted or not. Today, anyone can publish anything. And distinguishing truth from lies becomes increasingly difficult.

1.4.3. Post-Truth as the Norm

Philosophers speak of “post-truth”—a state where facts no longer matter, and emotional impact is decisive. In a post-truth world, you can claim anything, and if it sounds convincing, people will believe it.

A classic example is the assertion “no one knew the election would be rigged,” made after the rigging was proven. In a post-truth world, the past ceases to be fixed. It can be rewritten.

1.4.4. AI as a Generator of Plausible Lies

With the emergence of large language models (ChatGPT, Midjourney, Sora), we’ve crossed a new threshold. Before, creating convincing lies required talent. Now it requires a prompt.

AI can:

• Write text in anyone’s voice
• Create photos of events that never happened
• Generate videos where a politician says things they never said

For the first time in history, we live in a world where our eyes and ears are no longer evidence. Video can be faked, voices synthesized, documents generated.

1.5. Historical Lessons: When Trust Collapsed

To understand what’s happening today, it’s useful to look at past eras when trust in key institutions collapsed. These crises have similar structures, and lessons can be drawn from them.

1.5.1. The Great Depression (1929–1933)

The Great Depression was not just an economic crisis. It was a crisis of trust.

Banks lent to people who couldn’t repay. Investors bought shares in companies with inflated values. When the bubble burst, it turned out the trust was misplaced.

The result: depositors rushed to banks to withdraw their savings. Trust in the banking system collapsed. It took decades to restore—with new institutions (deposit insurance, regulation).

Lesson: Trust can be destroyed in a day. Restored in years.

1.5.2. The 2008 Financial Crisis

The 2008 crisis had the same nature as the Great Depression, but in new conditions. Rating agencies (S&P, Moody’s, Fitch) gave AAA ratings to mortgage-backed securities that were actually toxic. Investors who trusted these ratings lost billions.

After the crisis, it emerged that rating agencies knew about the problems but kept giving high ratings because they were paid by the issuers. Conflict of interest destroyed trust.

Lesson: If the guarantor has a conflict of interest, their guarantees are worthless.

1.5.3. The COVID-19 Pandemic (2020–2022)

The pandemic became a crisis not only of health but of information. People didn’t know whom to trust: governments that changed recommendations weekly, the WHO that denied airborne transmission, bloggers offering “alternative” treatments.

Infodemic—the epidemic of misinformation—proved nearly as dangerous as the virus itself.

Lesson: In a crisis requiring quick decisions, lack of trust in information sources costs lives.

1.5.4. Cambridge Analytica (2018)

In 2018, it emerged that data from millions of Facebook users was used to manipulate elections. The platform people trusted with their personal information turned out to be a tool of political manipulation.

This event was a turning point in attitudes toward digital platforms. People realized their data wasn’t theirs, and companies could use it against them.

Lesson: Trust in platforms is an illusion if the platform owns the data, not the person.

1.6. Cultural Variations of Trust

Trust has not only universal but also cultural variations. In different societies, people relate differently to strangers, to the state, to formal and informal obligations.

1.6.1. High-Trust and Low-Trust Societies

Sociologists divide societies into high-trust and low-trust. In high-trust societies (Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, Canada), people tend to trust strangers, the state, institutions. In low-trust societies (many post-Soviet countries, Latin America, Africa), people trust only family and their closest circle.

These differences aren’t “national character.” They result from historical experience. Societies that experienced repression, civil war, total corruption learn not to trust. It’s a rational adaptation to an environment where trust is dangerous.

1.6.2. Can Trust Culture Be Changed?

Yes. But to change it, you need to change not “mentality” but institutions. When people see that contracts are enforced, that courts are fair, that the state doesn’t steal—they begin to trust. Trust is restored from below, through experiences of reliability.

This is a crucial observation for our book: trust cannot be imposed from above. It can only be grown from below, through thousands of small interactions where words prove not empty.

1.7. Anthropological Conclusion: Why Now

Let’s summarize.

We have:

• A biological need for trust, shaped by evolution
• Experience of tribal trust, which worked in small groups
• Experience of religious trust, which worked in homogeneous cultures
• Experience of state trust, which worked with strong, honest government
• Experience of informal reputation, which worked in professional communities

But:

• Tribes are destroyed. We live among strangers.
• Religion is no longer a universal regulator.
• The state has lost trust (largely deserved).
• Informal reputation doesn’t scale to a global world.

And simultaneously:

• Technology is ready. Blockchain enables immutable, decentralized records.
• Demand is formed. People are tired of lies. They seek transparency.
• Generations have shifted. Young people who grew up on the internet don’t believe in anonymity and are ready for transparency.

We stand at a unique historical point where necessity (crisis of old mechanisms) meets opportunity (new technologies). This is a window of opportunity. It won’t stay open forever.