Prosocial (In Theory)

In my last post, I made the announcement that I was going to be starting an Evolutionary Philosophy Circle with Andy Norman and David Sloan Wilson. I shared lots of links to learn about the non-profit organization Prosocial World, which would be hosting this project (along with many others) on its new online platform called the Prosocial Commons.

Projects on the Commons are intended to last 12 weeks to mimic the 100 Day Challenge model that was developed by the Rapid Results Institute. And since we started on April 25th, that means we're about half way through our first "generation" of work. (Note that the 12-week sessions are called generations in order to mimic evolution, and to give people the chance to vary, select, and retain what works after a sizable but manageable chunk of effort.) So far, our group has gone exceedingly well and I'm really looking forward to sharing much more about that in future blog posts.

Before I get to all that, however, I wanted to share something more about the theories behind all of this work because they are really significant and incredibly useful. Many of the links I shared in my last post had quick summaries of this, but for the full treatment, you really need to read the book-length manual called Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups.
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​In preparation for leading a group through this process, I hoovered up everything I could about Prosocial. To start, here are a few quotes from a great book review of Prosocial that was written by Kathleen Walsh. She is one of the 650 group facilitators who have been trained on this method, and she has been wonderful to work with!

• “Prosocial” is, at the broadest level, an umbrella term that describes an emerging global movement to elevate the functioning of groups at all levels and scale so that individual members can achieve their mutual goals in cooperative, efficient processes and groups can more effectively collaborate within networks, or nested hierarchies.
• The conceptual framework developed by Atkins, Wilson and Hayes builds upon the research conclusions of Elinor Ostrom, the only woman awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, which refute the conventional assumptions derived from Garrett Hardin’s “the tragedy of the commons” formulation.
• Ostrom’s work identified the qualities of effective, cooperative groups that self-organize at the local level to protect collective resources and achieve outcomes they value. Atkins et al have enlarged Ostrom’s findings to define the essential qualities of effective, self- organized groups at multiple levels and scales. Based on her work, the Core Design Principles they have developed are:

 

1. Shared identity and purpose
2. Equitable distribution of contributions and benefits
3. Fair and inclusive decision-making
4. Monitoring agreed-upon behaviors
5. Graduated responding to helpful and unhelpful behaviors
6. Fast and fair conflict resolution
7. Authority to self-govern
8. Collaborative relations with other groups

 

• Wilson immediately recognized how Ostrom’s design principle approach dovetailed with multilevel selection theory as an aspect of evolutionary transitions, which posits that members of groups can become so cooperative that the group itself becomes a higher-level organism in its own right.
• The application of the scientific verification of the evolutionary advantage of more cooperative groups to economic and social system design has exciting implications for envisioning and achieving a positive future for humanity.
• Prosocial builds upon a “power with”, not “power over” relationship model by integrating the importance of enhancing individual “psychological flexibility” skills honed by the use of vital “noticing” tools derived from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which they term “ACT Matrices”.
• Use of the Prosocial ACT matrices offers deeper understanding of members’ experiences of themselves, their group relationships and common goals. ... This awareness leads, in turn, to the recognition of specific action steps that can strengthen their group’s overall functioning and the quality of their relationships with one another.
• The potential of the Prosocial ARC to inform the quickening of insight and skill demanded by the current survival challenges humanity faces is linked to the degree to which it actually practiced. ... ​These are exciting ideas, indeed.

That covers the basics pretty well, other than I would add that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been very rigorously studied with several hundred radomized control trials now showing that it is an effective psychological intervention method. For just a little bit more, Kathleen's entire 3-page review makes for a quick summary of the book for people in a hurry to learn about it. If you are only interested in these theories for theoretical interests, you can definitely stop reading this post now. (Seriously, just stop.)

If you have applied (or are about to apply) these theories, however, either formally with Prosocial or informally on your own, here are several key passages from the book that bring many more details about the process into focus. I recommend reading these regularly for reminders on how to improve group behaviour.

• p.21 Evolutionary theory offers a novel perspective on virtually all efforts to accomplish positive change at all scales, from that of the individual to that of the planet. One key insight with this theory is that there is something special about small groups, which were the only human social environment for most of our evolutionary history, and, like the cells of a multicellular organism, they need to remain the building blocks of modern large-scale societies.
• p.28 By applying the first seven core design principles at ever higher levels of organisation, small groups could be the bedrock of much larger polycentric (that is, many centred) systems of governance. Polycentric governance respects the localised needs, knowledge, and autonomy of small groups, as well as the need for modern societies to organise at a regional, national, or even global scale. It takes into consideration that life consists of many spheres of activity, that each sphere has an optimum scale, and that good governance requires identifying the optimal scale for each sphere and appropriate coordination among the spheres.
• p.53 If we want to build a science of intentional change, it makes sense to use the power of associative, social, and contingency learning to affect behaviour. We cannot stop there, however, because these tools do not yet fully give us the means to foster key elements of prosocial relations to others, such as trust, awareness of shared purpose, and more prosocially oriented values. For that purpose, we need also to delve into the world of narratives and rules, cognitive heuristics and problem solving, and sense of self and perspective taking.

• p.59 Our purposes grow largely from our capacity to tell stories about the future (and the past). When we say “purpose”, we generally mean either values or goals. Values are our chosen qualities of being and doing. They express how we want to be as people, and the desired qualities we would like our actions to reflect. Think of them as the adverbs of our lives. When we act in service of values, we are acting lovingly, compassionately, kindly, consciously, and so on. Values are different than goals. Concrete goals can be achieved; you can make a million dollars, or get a degree, but once a goal is achieved it will likely lose its power as a source of further motivation. That is not true of values, and this difference is a major reason why values are so important. Values are only displayed or instantiated, not obtained or possessed, so while we may use them, they are never used up.
• p.64 The six flexibility processes that make up psychological flexibility: values, emotional flexibility, cognitive flexibility, committed action, flexible attention, and perspective taking. Together these comprise an integrated skill set. Both individuals and groups can be psychologically flexible. It is a skill set that supports prosocial behaviour change and the deployment of the core design principles. However, it also has implications for building some key elements that social psychologists have found underpinning prosocial behaviour: trust, a focus on longer-term rather than immediate outcomes, and social value orientation.
• p.74 The matrix is a process for thinking about two key dimensions of experience: “toward/away”, which reflects the way all animals move toward aspects of experience they want more of and away from experiences they want less of, and “outside/inside”, which represents what is actually happening in the physical world—what people can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell—versus the internal experience of our mind, including our thoughts, emotions, imagery, memories, and the like.
• p.74 Generally speaking, the more frequently our behaviour is guided by moving toward what we want, rather than away from what we don’t want, the happier and more fulfilled we’ll be. Moving toward what we care about creates energy and vitality, as well as expands the flexibility and range of our behaviours. … B.F. Skinner defined freedom as being under the control of appetitive stimuli as opposed to aversive stimuli—living in a toward mode rather than an away one.
• pp78-83 Completing the matrix. … Start with what we might call the “values” quadrant. [Inside—Toward. “What matters most to you about your group?”] … Move to the quadrant about the inner stuff you would rather not have. [Inside—Away. “What difficult internal experiences show up and get in the way of moving toward what is most important to you?”] … Moving to the Outside—Away quadrant, answer this question: “What can people see you do to avoid or control those difficult experiences?” This quadrant is all about what you do overtly to try and minimise the occurrence or impact of the difficult experiences you just mapped in the Inside—Away quadrant. … For the final quadrant [Outside—Toward], consider this: “What might you do to move toward who or what is most important to you (even in the presence of difficult experiences)?” What are some small or large steps that you might actually take to increase the frequency or presence of what you most care about in your life?
• p.95 We designed the Prosocial process to be modular. It contains six interlocking modules, which groups can use separately or in combination: 1. Measurements for assessment and diagnosis. 2. The individual matrix. 3. The core design principles. 4. The collective matrix. 5. Goal setting. 6. Measurements for evaluating change.
• p.100 One group we worked with had a leader who did not appreciate the value of what he saw as “soft skills”, and so he refused to do the individual matrix with his group. Although using the collective matrix alone worked up to a point, the Prosocial process never quite took hold. In the end, the group limped along relatively ineffectively because organisational inflexibility flowed from the failure to work on psychological flexibility.
• p.101 Even though the individual matrix is an excellent icebreaker in its own right, sometimes groups need to first engage in other trust-building exercises, such as shared projects and social events, before they can even begin to work with the individual matrix.
• pp.104-7 In general, like trust, cohesion is slow to build and easy to fracture. But there are definitely things you can do. Here are a few ideas that might be helpful for your context. Use the individual matrix before the rest of the Prosocial process. … Utilise the power of small groups. … Clarify membership. … Make space for the personal. … Improve communication skills. … Share reflections. … Use “onboarding” processes. … Create similarity in the context of diversity. … Create a strong sense of shared purpose.
• pp.107-9 There are many practical benefits for groups to have a shared sense of purpose. … Shared purpose creates a sense of group identity and belonging. … Shared purpose guides individual actions, empowering individuals at all levels of the group. … Shared purpose creates motivation. … Shared purpose facilitates cooperation with other groups. … Shared purpose creates personal benefits. … Shared purpose makes collective interests more salient and highly valued.
• p.109-10 The collective matrix is a superb tool for clarifying and deepening a sense of shared purpose in most groups. Not only can it help establish values and goals, but the process of discussing the fears and concerns that surface and might get in the way can often help with the process of integrating individual and collective interests while building a sense of trust and safety in the group. Instead of beginning the process with “What matters most to me about the group?” you can begin with questions like “What is our shared purpose? Who or what matters to us?” You can then follow up with questions similar to those we outlined with the individual matrix exercise, but framed as a collective.
• pp.120-1 Consider this example: Three employees of a medical goods company, Alison, John, and Margaret, are arguing about who should be given the perk of an overseas sales-training program. Alison argues that she made the largest number of sales this year and deserves to be rewarded. John argues that Alison previously received a similar trip and that it’s his turn. Margaret argues that she really needs the training as the lack of it has been holding her back from making as many sales as Alison. … Alison’s approach, an equity approach, takes merit and contribution into account when deciding on the distribution of resources. By contrast, John’s approach, the equality approach, provides equal benefits irrespective of contribution. Margaret’s approach, allocation according to need, is a third normative principle that strives to achieve equal final outcomes for all, so that those who are more disadvantaged to begin with receive more irrespective of contribution. When group goals focus on high performance, groups tend to value a norm of equity. But when they are focused on social harmony and care, they tend to value norms of equality or need. Each approach has costs and benefits. Equity motivates highly skilled individuals to contribute as much as possible to the group, but if handled poorly it can create competition and comparison between individuals, thereby reducing overall group cohesion. Equality emphasises the equal worth of all but can create situations in which people free-ride on the efforts of others. Need emphasises a principle of care for all but can create feelings of resentment when those who contribute little are sometimes carried by those who contribute a great deal.
• pp.142-3 Models of decision making you may find helpful. … We organised the following options along a spectrum, from least to most inclusive. … Autocratic decision making. … Consultative leadership. … Facilitative leadership. … The advice process. … Consent-based decision making. [Similar to the advice process, it differs in that authority to decide is distributed across the group. The group votes on proposals with these typical response options: agree, abstain, disagree, block.] … Consensus decision making.
• p.145 Once you’ve conducted a collective matrix focused on core design principle 1, shared identity and purpose, encourage each group member to develop a personal mission, outlining the value they wish to provide to better serve the group’s collective goals. Members can share and discuss these personal missions to increase coordination, self-determination, and accountability.
• p.148 Ultimately, with the Prosocial process we’ve built all our ideas around the guiding principle of including people in decisions that affect them. From that core idea you can tack on two other principles that are often helpful: 1. Enable those who have the urgency to take the initiative to make proposals to actually make them. 2. Move authority to whomever has the best information, provided they are willing to take the authority.
• p.151-2 When we use “monitoring”, we really just mean transparency of behaviour—all members being able to see or notice what others are doing in the group. … In our own Prosocial development team, which must interact largely online, we noticed that simply instituting a shared to-do list using online tools such as Notion, Trello, and Slack made our behaviour much more transparent.
• p.153 There are many benefits of monitoring. … Increased prosociality. … Decreased cheating. … Increased motivation and shared identity. … Improved coordination.
• p.162 Ostrom’s fifth design principle was “graduated sanctions” for violations of rules and agreements. While we recognise that reducing uncooperative behaviours is essential for groups, it is at least as important in most contexts to also pay attention to increasing the frequency of helpful behaviours. Few groups will survive for very long without social support when people act cooperatively.
• p.163 People are more cooperative when opportunities to punish uncooperative behaviour are present than when they're absent, and the threat of sanctions for "bad apples" decreases antisocial behaviour. If you're in a group, it's good to know that "bad" behaviour will not be tolerated and may even lead to expulsion from the group; otherwise, group members will lose faith in the capacity of the group to avoid being undermined by self-interest.
• p.163-5 Initial sanctions for rule violations were often very light. Gossip is an example. … Sanctions that start small are far less likely to elicit strong emotional responses, counterattacks, or withdrawal from the group. By giving violators an easy way out, the sanctions also are likely to seem fairer and less indiscriminate. … Poorly designed systems of sanctioning can have serious long-term side effects, such as the following: counterproductive behaviours, diminished well-being and engagement, diminished trust, inefficiency, negative effects on the one administering sanctions.
• p.174 Participants were asked to play the role of a team leader giving feedback to a team member (Frank) who had interrupted them twice and joked three times during a meeting. Paul played the role of Frank, and the people in his classes role-played giving him feedback. … The classic management advice for this sort of situation is to simply describe the situation as factually as possible, describe how it affected you, and then ask for the other’s perspective. … But almost nobody spontaneously approached the situation in this open, learning-oriented way. Almost everybody assumed they were in the right and Frank was in the wrong.
• p.177 Conflict is maintained in our heads, in the judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, and justified and unjustified, and stepping into the perspective of another, seeing things from their point of view and drawing a circle that takes them in, is one of the hardest things in the world to do. If a group is to find a way through conflicts, it needs to ensure it has effective capability at three levels: 1. Interpersonal skills such as listening well and speaking assertively, not aggressively. 2. Personal skills such as emotion regulation and perspective taking. 3. Group-level agreements and processes for managing conflict efficiently and effectively. … When you are working with a group to explore its values and overarching goals in relation to conflict, it can be helpful to make a distinction between task conflict, which is often helpful for groups, and relationship conflict, which is almost always unhelpful in groups.
• p.190 Core design principle 7, the authority to self-govern, is about the group, not the individuals within the group. Specifically, it’s about the group’s capacity to manage its own affairs without excessive interference from outside. “Authority” can mean the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. But it can also mean the capacity and power to author one’s own experience. We mean it in this latter way. … The concept of subsidiarity arose within the Catholic Church as “the principle” that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level.” The political concept of federalism follows the same principle, according a degree of authority to smaller units nested within larger units.
• p.191 The core design principles are so sensitive to context that nearly every group will need to continuously monitor how its implementation is working, and change it as problems are encountered.
• p.201 How can core design principle 8 be implemented in a practical sense? We will outline three answers to this question. First, when a single group grows in size, it must differentiate its members as groups of groups in order to function well. … Second, if your group or multigroup organisation has become prosocial enough to function as a corporate unit, then you can work with like-minded groups to form prosocial consortia that thrive in competition with less-organised groups. … Third, groups often fail to implement the core design principles and polycentric governance because of competing narratives.
• p.209 You’ll need a process for compiling and prioritising the goals of the group over the short and medium term. You will need an action plan. … Goals are important for groups because they help them coordinate action in a shared direction, and because they motivate people to initiate and sustain effort, even when the going gets tough.
• p.210 Learning goals can help increase the psychological flexibility of groups. Learning goals help the group members hold goals more lightly, recognising the need to try things out (variation) and retain only that which is helpful (selection and retention). Learning goals help group members be more willing to make mistakes and less likely to seek to blame others if things go wrong.
• p.224 Contacting our hopes for a better world necessarily means contacting our pain over what has happened, what is happening, and what might happen in the future. It is easy to let our hearts harden over and let ourselves become cynical, as though to hope, wish, or act to create a more cooperative and harmonious world is the height of foolish naivety. Faced with all that pain, it is so easy to stop imagining the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
• p.224 Martin Luther King Jr. expressed this idea this way: “And all I’m saying is simply this: that all life is interrelated. We are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And what affects one directly affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich, even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the Mayo Clinic. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made."

​How beautiful! In theory.

Next time, I'll report on how this is actually going....

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