Predicting Trust in a Diverse Culture

I’d like to talk about how we react to the unfamiliar, the foreign, the other. These are thoughts on why some people have such a hard time accepting, trusting and investing in diversity within our schools, businesses, communities and cultural institutions.

Perception is observation + past experience

When we experience another person, our perception is with our senses as well as our past memories. What is happening in front of us is a very small part of the judgment call of prediction that is being made. Is this person familiar? Are they dangerous? Is there an opportunity to engage and gain something?

Based on what we see, smell, hear — does a person fit into an existing model that can be easily recalled, modified and immediately used for predicting behavior, present and future? If the answer is no, then for many the safest reaction is to reserve trust, reserve judgement until further information is available. For some, based on past experience, the answer is to immediately become distrustful, wary and to begin planning escape or avoidance.

Now, that response is for when the person doesn’t fit an existing model. How about when the person does fit a model. Then the model that is selected as a close enough fit and the type of planned reaction will depend on past experiences. Sometimes these are healthy reasonable experiences and sometimes they are wildly unjustified and biased experiences.

Significantly we can consider that individuals with a wide range of experiences with many people will have more potential models to choose from and just as importantly will have more nuanced criteria for how they fit their perceptions to a model. They will be more likely to reserve judgement, knowing from experience that their existing models may not be a good fit, observing more attributes and details before making a commitment as to what sort of person they have encountered.

Individuals with fewer experiences with people will have fewer models to choose from and may be less likely to reserve judgement, out of ignorance or fear. An ignorant person will develop more nuanced models as they are exposed to a broader range of people. A fearful person will simply avoid different people and attempt to maintain the current simple models they already have, that of the familiar and the foreign. We might call this type of person small minded or close minded.

Physiology — hardwired to compare

In my own theory of mind, mental models are more than just an abstraction we use to talk about how we think. They are real physiological constructs available in our brains as coordinated cellular chemical structures. They are not permanent organs, they are adhoc performances by large groups of cells in both our central and peripheral nervous system.

Second, we model ourselves — body and mind, our environment — from the clothing we wear to our limited understanding of the universe, other people — friends, family, strangers, groups, crowds, nations, stereotypes and all. It’s all there sometimes stored as a potential model, sometimes actively being simulated by a host of cells, featuring all of the attributes we’ve identified as significant enough to keep track of.

Third, we model ourselves modeling other people and how they model us and how we model them modeling us. Right. You know this. It’s not news to you. It’s called reflection and it’s a big part of what makes us sentient, rational and empathetic.

Fourth. This is the biggie. We do all this — our brains and bodies together, it’s a coordinated effort, so that we can predict what will happen next. The next few moments, hours, days, months and years. We do this to survive. We do this to win. We do this because that is what we are. We are a host of living tissue that is constantly predicting what will happen next and attempting to influence it or react to it with what limited capacity we can.

Conclusion and solution

If we can agree that we all are physiologically involved in comparing the neuron based mental models we have built of ourselves, our families, friends, companions, neighbors, peers, co-workers and community members with everyone else that we meet, then we have a place to start in addressing issues of diversity in these same parts of our lives.

Experience and education are the key components of a solution. We are literally the embodiment of our past experience. By adding new experiences with more diverse people, new mental models can be created, modifications and details can be added to existing mental models. Through this process we should be able to establish a feeling of trust by having a higher confidence in our ability to make accurate predictions about these now more familiar people.

We often describe someone who has a diverse experience with many cultures as worldly, implying that they have an ease about them when confronted with something new or different. We may not be able to send people around the world for these experiences but we can attempt to bring experiences from the world to the people.

By providing real access to diverse cultures and ideas you may find people once closed to the idea of something new, actively championing diversity themselves. Invite other communities to come and speak with your community. Bring new or different cultural traditions into your community as an addition to your existing traditions, not as a replacement. Maintain educational resources and opportunities to learn about different people and different ways of life and make them both physically and culturally accessible to everyone in your community. Take advantage of existing resources. Do company trips to museums and cultural centers. Invite classmates to traditional ethnic celebrations. Reach out to leaders in other communities and ask for help.

I also suggest having diverse groups of people compare and contrast what is the same and what is different in active forums. Sharing these experiences so that individuals within those groups can see how the mental models they have of diverse types of people overlap, where they differ, what they can expect from cultures that are not the same as their own and how closely aligned individual people can be despite cultural differences.

If you can agree that the change is a physiological one that can be addressed simply through providing access and education, it will become much easier to establish a workable plan. It’s only a matter of time and investment.