What can information theory tell us about trust?

Am going to spin some particles in the accelerator and collide them to see what happens. This is one I have been thinking about for several years and finally got round to it. Let's meet the particles:

Brené Brown doyenne of the popular trust scene and creator of the BRAVING framework:

Claude Shannon, father of Information Theory:

Let's inject them into our particle accelerator and see what happen, Brené Brown BRAVING beam first, a playbook for developing trust:

Boundaries | You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s okay and not okay, you ask. You’re willing to say no.

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Reliability | You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t over promise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities.

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Accountability | You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends.

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Vault | You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential.

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Integrity | You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy. And you choose to practice your values rather than simply professing them.

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Nonjudgment | I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment.

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Generosity | You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.

Next some Shannon:

?? BAM!

We got something after the collision, let's analyse the data and take a look once our scientists have crunched the numbers ...

Hmm, Brené's BRAVING clauses seem to have bonded with the Shannon-Weaver model. Indeed it's almost a perfect match ??. Why is this?

I'd argue because trust is very strongly related to information theory:

• If you don't trust me I may say the right thing and you will misunderstand whereas if you do I may say the wrong thing and you will still understand the intent. This suggests trust contains error correction for more reliable communications --it also improves the signal-to-noise ratio
• And in this manner trust allows for higher bandwidth communications

No wonder there is such emphasis put on it in:

• Relationships
• High-performing teams

Trust is also built up iteratively in little vulnerability exchanges --it's hard to achieve and easy to lose. Some Brené Brown quotes:

“Trust is earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.”

“We need to trust to be vulnerable, and we need to be vulnerable in order to build trust.”

“Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement. Trust isn’t a grand gesture—it’s a growing marble collection.”

It's like a game of iterative Prisoner's Dilemma:

This is going well ?? let's throw some more things into the particle injection chamber. How about Freud's Ego Defence:

?? BAM!

Another collision, let's analyse the data and take a look ...

Hmm, that fits too but it doesn't seem to be helping. Indeed the dark ego seems to be adding to the noise while simultaneously messing with the information source, transmitter, receiver and destination.

Let's throw in some Transactional Analysis and Social Power Theory:

?? BAM! What we end up with is the following:

There is a directionality and amplitude bias to the communications--and perhaps preference around use of transmitter and receiver, though this will depend on:

• Adult-Child-Parent mode of the participants
• Quality and style of the leader--are they a Churchill, a servant leader, an overwhelmed dictator, a David Brent character, a Jim Jones or something else?
• And (as Nims Dhawan just informed me): Berne's 3rd rule of communication: the psychological will override the social messages

At best the team/network will be made smarter, at worse it is being DDOSed and corrupted.

Conclusions

This maybe distasteful for some, liberating for others, but we cannot escape our roles as nodes in the "Meat Network" that is interpersonal communications. This Meat Network is the stuff of teams, families and organisations, society as a whole--and even the conversations we have with ourselves. And what is true of silicon is also true of flesh: packets are switched over lossy connections and the network itself is shaped by ideas about self, other, and one up one down. Work to add some balance and trust --some error correction and bandwidth--to our human network, it's what it needs right now. Brené and Claude (RIP) will salute you.

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Nice post on similar theme:

Good Addition from colleague Joanne Rose:

And finally Ben Sangwa on related topic from this post: