Ecological Social Psychology and Dynamical Systems (2007)

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Situating Coordinationand Cooperation Between Ecological

and Social Psychology

Reuben M. BaronDepartment of PsychologyThe University of Connecticut

The major thrust of this analysis is to demonstrate the value of making ecological psy-

chology more social while recognizing that for this to occur, social psychology must

become more ecological in the sense that its key concepts must be treated in an em-

bodied manner. I elaborate these propositions by focusing on establishing differences

between coordination and cooperation. I then explore a range of relationships be-tween them from a social psychological perspective. To accomplish this integration,

which uses the commitment to reciprocity as a joint organizing principle, I use three

complementary modelsdynamical systems, effectivities-affordances, and a role-

rule model of social commitment. Key aspects of the analysis involve (1) elaborating

themeaning of Turveys (1990) proper-relations view of coordination and (2) demon-

strating the particular relevance of roles and trust as unifying concepts. From this per-

spective, coordinations occur between roles, rather than individuals, at the level of

team play. Team play, in turn, is shown to depend on trust. And trust, in turn, is re-

lated to perceptions of dependability, thereby illustrating a critical intersection of

ecological and social psychology.

The particular twist I would like to put on the theme of making ecological psychol-

ogy more social and social psychology more ecological is to bring together a central

concept from ecological psychologycoordinationwith a central concept from

social psychologycooperation. I have chosen such a strategy because I hope to

demonstrate that at its core coordination is a social phenomenon, and at its core

cooperation is an embodied joint activity. In particular, I will attempt to demon-

strate that social psychological concepts such as group, role, and trust are not

ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 19(2), 179199Copyright 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.


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isolated phenomena whose study can be postponed until ecological psychology is

ready. On the other side of the equation, I am equally convinced that the

cognitivist, exchange theory approach to studying cooperation, personified by the

Prisoners Dilemma (PD) paradigm, is a special case that ignores critical aspects of

cooperation involving the self-organized emergence of joint actions designed to

create mutually beneficial outcomes.

It is also important to understand that when I claim that certain phenomena

studiedby ecological psychologists, such as coordination, are social at their founda-

tion, I am not merely referring to issues involving the social psychology of experi-

mentation (Van Orden & Holden, 2002). Rather, I will focus on demonstrating

that certain aspects of sociality converge with certain aspects of coordination in

principled and deep ways rooted in their sharing certain organizational problems

that flow from their having to integrate in space-time multiple entities at multiple

levels. I will begin with a social psychological analysis of coordination. I will then

move on to showing the consequences of treating cooperation in an embodied way

for establishing relationships between coordination and cooperation.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COORDINATIONAND COOPERATION

Before beginning this analysis, it is necessary to briefly discuss the differences be-

tween coordination and cooperation and to clarify what it means to situate these

terms between ecological and social psychology. Coordination in this context is at

the level of finding or creating harmonious or synchronized patterns of relations

between entities. Such relations may range from achieving synchrony between

limbs either within or between people to more molar synchronies such as hand-

clapping or dance steps between partners. In the standard ecological literature (e.g.

Turvey, 1990), the study of coordination is an end in itself; in the present context

coordination is a means to an end, that end being cooperation. For example, if the

goal is to move a log that is blocking the road, cooperation requires working to-

gether to move that log. Although lifting the log may be more efficient if the lifting

is highly coordinated between two or more people, of greater importance is getting

the log moved through peoples joint efforts. That is, cooperation is goal- or out-

come-driven.

Given the above definition, what does it mean to situate these phenomena be-

tween ecological and social psychology? I propose that social and ecological psy-

chology share a commitment to the same ordering principlereciprocity. In each

domain, what is foundational is establishing that there is mutuality of effect or in-

fluence. For example, coordination involves reciprocity of part-part relations (e.g.

limbs) and cooperation involves nesting part-part reciprocity in part-whole rela-

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just as animals select niches and niches select animals, so people select groups (or

other people) and groups select people. Unpacking such reciprocity is the overrid-

ing goal of this article. The social constructs that I will introduce such as role and

trust provide a scaffolding for understanding reciprocity.

TOWARDS A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGYOF COORDINATION

Turvey (1990) defines the key problem of the study of coordination as bringing

into proper relation multiple and different component parts (p. 938). I believe

that at the heart of this elegant formulation is an implicit loan on sociality. Spe-

cifically, I will attempt to show that social concepts such as teamwork, role, and

trust are in effect powerful ways of solving the degrees of freedom problem of coor-

dination (the excess of independent variables) by establishing the meaning of

proper relations. The applicability of such concepts is no accident, given that thecore problem of social psychologythe interdependence or reciprocity relations of

individuals and groupsinvolves similar sets of issues. Problems such as why indi-

viduals aggregate into groups and the consequences of grouping are problems of

reciprocity. More generally, at issue is how individual goals or intentions can be co-

ordinated or brought into proper relations with collective level goals.

One approach to this problem is suggested by Hodges and Geyers (2006) val-

ues-realizing reinterpretation of the Asch conformity paradigm. The

metaprinciple that they utilize is that action and perception seek values that

lead to the integrity of the ecosystem as a whole (Hodges, this issue). In this

case, the ecosystem is a behavior setting (Barker, 1968) that simulates a group

performance-maintenance problem having to do with how to coordinate what

appear to be conflicting valuescaring for the truth, caring for others, and car-

ing that others care about truth (Hodges, this issue). Hodges resolution strategy

turns what appears to be an error into caring for others and turns following into

what might be attempts at leading. What this accomplishes is to shift the mean-

ing of error and conformity from the experimenters a priori biases to asking what

coordinations of values and actions best maintain the integrity of a group.

Viewed this way, maintaining the integrity of a group is a special case of what a

behavior setting does to ensure its survival. Moreover, in both cases, the resolu-

tion strategy can be viewed as (a) supplying a coordination strategy for proper re-

lations between individuals and groups and (b) a way to master unruly degrees of

freedom between individuals and groups. From this perspective, caring coordi-

nates both individual and group perceptions and actions. Viewed thus, values as

organizing principles derived from maintaining the integrity of an ecosystem pro-

vide a way of framing both the concerns of this article and Turveys (1990) invo-

SITUATING COORDINATION AND COOPERATION 181


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baseball, depending on the dangers posed by another players charging into sec-

ond base. Similarly, there are times to be competitive and times to be coopera-

tive. And, there are times when for all its risks, trusting is foundational for reci-

procity to work. For example, when uncertainty is high, it may make sense to

trust a leader regarding what is a proper coordination (Schmidt, Christianson,

Carello, & Baron, 1994). In each of these examples proper gets its meaning fromthose coordinations that will maintain the integrity of a system.

Using Schmidt et al. (1994) as a model, let us see how a bridge can be built be-

tween Hodges reformulation of the Asch paradigm and Schmidts et al.s program

of research into interpersonal coordination dynamics. Schmidts research is impor-

tant to the present argument because it both replicates the effects of physical coor-

dination parameters and demonstrates the moderation effects of social variables.

More specifically, the results of Schmidt et al.(1994) can be reframed to bear on

the meaning of proper relations between parts of a dyad. When pairs of subjects

were created using a dominance scale it was found that more stable coordinations

were found for the heterogeneous pairs (High-Low) than the homogeneous pairs

(High- High; Low-Low). One way to interpret these results is that the

leader-follower pairing offered dyads a more trustworthy model for shifting from a

maintenance tendency to a magnet effect; that is, they traded individual prefer-

ences (maintenance) for achieving a stable social unit (magnet effect). More

broadly, maintenance effects reflect the intrinsic dynamics of the component

unitsa kind of proto-competitive dynamics whereas the magnet effects reflect

an extrinsic dynamics that models cooperation (Turvey, 1990).

In this context then, it could be said that the degrees of freedom were most effi-

ciently organized by reciprocal as opposed to symmetrical role relations. That is, roleprovides a handy way to establish proper coordination between components of a

dyad. Roles have differentiated functions associated with them that are proper for aperson occupying that position. In this context, role involves a leader-follower rela-

tionshipthe most primitive of role differentiationsalbeit one that is highly use-

ful in situations of high uncertainty. The idea of role regulation of

coordinationsgroup-defined rules of reciprocitywill be elaborated in my dis-

cussion of the relationship between coordination and cooperation. First, it will be

necessary to provide a treatment of cooperation that will mesh with the above con-

ceptualization of coordination.

TOWARDS AN EMBODIED VIEW OF COOPERATION:

GOING BEYOND THE PRISONS DILEMMA

Fundamental to what I refer to as embodied cooperation are joint actions of organ-

isms that operate on the environment to change it for mutual benefit where that

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(1966) Robbers Cave study, conflicting groups of boys in a summer camp sponta-

neously work together to push a bus that has broken down off the road. Similarly, in

Aschs (1952) example, people work together to remove a log that is blocking the

road. The jigsaw paradigm (Aronson, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, & Snapp, 1978) pro-

vides a way of conceptualizing why such actions occur. Specifically, in this para-

digm, representatives of conflicting ethnic groups are put in a situation where each

group has part of the information necessary to solve a problem. Joint action in the

form of sharing of information is necessary to solve the problem. In this context,

reciprocity becomes a proper strategy of conflict resolution. In each case, individu-

ally there is an insufficiency of information to solve the problem; that is, coordina-

tion provides outcomes that are superior to what can be achieved by one groups

working by itself.

It is this state of insufficiency or deficiency of the individual unit that is key to

understanding how it is that the standard Prisoners Dilemma (PD) model of com-

petitioncooperation yields a skewed view of cooperation. The PD approach be-

gins with a basic postulate, the Nash Equilibrium (Nash, 1950), which generates

the prediction that individualistic-selfish response strategies are rational and likely

to predominate in short-term, mixed-motive situations. That is, players, when

faced with choices involving cooperating with or betraying the other, typically

chose a betrayal strategy (competition), given outcomes which range as follows; if

both confess, 5 years in prison results (joint betrayal); if both players dont confess

(cooperation), they get 2 years in prison. If, on the other hand, one confesses and

the other doesnt,one goes free, the other gets 10 years (asymmetrical betrayal).

In such situations individual self-interest, in the form of each picking a betrayal

strategy, is predicted by the Nash Equilibrium.

The model for such a competitive or Nash Equilibrium strategy is a situation

where it is rational to take advantage of the other before they take advantage of

you. This strategy is proper given the assumption the opponent cant be trusted;that is, cooperation is simply too risky a strategic move to unilaterally adopt inthese circumstances. Such circumstances include not being able to communicate

with the other in situations where the other is a disembodied payoff matrix. In

this situation, decisions are a matter of inferences rather than observations of the

others problems. Given these constraints, it is indeed rational for people not to

give up an individualistic strategy. A bridge can be built to the coordination lit-

erature; people in coordination paradigms who persist in following their individ-

ually preferred state or rhythma maintenance tendencycan also be treated

as exhibiting a Nash Equilibrium. Giving up or modifying ones rhythmic prefer-

ences to establish a joint rhythm is a symmetry-breaking event. Further, both PD

and coordination research have typically been in situations that can be described

as space-time circumscribed systems (R. C. Schmidt, personal communication,

June 5 2006) In line with Schmidts point it could be argued that values and



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Viewed thus, cooperation comes out of a state ofjoint insufficiency, as elegantlymodeled by the jigsaw paradigm. In effect, what breaks down the Nash Equilibriumis evidence of the inadequacy of individual self-interest to solve pressing, adaptive

problems. Instead of inferences regarding what the other is likely to do, we get per-

ceptually verifiable evidence regarding what we each cannot do without coordinat-ing ones actions with those of another organism.1 Instead of dynamics based on

some invisible hand reasoning we turn to others for a helping handperceptiontrumps inference.

In sum, the PD-type situation is discontinuous as opposed to on-line and reflec-

tive as opposed to perceptually constrained. Players are isolated from one another

with their metagoal being to see what I can get away with.

DIFFERING FORMS OF COOPERATION

What I designate as embodied cooperation, on the other hand, is born out of

earned trust. Such trust is all about reciprocity that is demonstrated on-line when,

for example, a play is run.

We treat cooperation as embodied in the flow of action; it is truly a social dy-

namics that capitalizes on coordinated movements that have a flow and trajectory

to them. In such cases, we do not choose to cooperate; cooperation chooses us

when field dynamics so dictate; that is, cooperation is perceptually driven in the

Gestalt-sense of our seeking a social good figure, as when players perceive what

must be done to complete a play. In the ecological context, cooperation is percep-

tually compelled rather than chosen as when it is disembodied.2 At issue are the

collective consequences of spontaneously acting together to achieve goals

nonrealizable as individuals. This contrasts sharply with the PD paradigm, where

individuals decide to allocate outcomes in a competitive or cooperative manner.

More broadly in the PD situation, cooperation is, in effect, a top-down choice.

When cooperation is embodied, it emerges bottom up within the flow of coordi-

nated action, with direct perception providing information regarding what joint

actions are required (see Hodges, this issue, for a requiredness interpretation of val-ues).

When such perceptions occur in the context of a team sport, it is likely that

players are no longer coordinating their actions as individuals; roles become the fo-

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1A rationale for the existence of information that specifies this kind of abstract and temporally ex-

tended relation between the environment and other actors is provided by Schmidt (this issue) using

Gibsons (1979/1986) example of the occluding edge as a model.2The proposition that cooperation is compelled by field dynamics can be compared to people help-


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cus of the coordination. Roles in this context also reduce the necessity for complex

decision making and thereby allow players to focus more readily on the information

available in the stimulus array. Reciprocity of action is now hypothesized to be me-

diated by a group-level role structure. In basketball, for example, coordinations arebetween a point guard and a forward, each of whom earns trust by being in his or

her proper place in the sequence of action. At this point we can speak of team play

as embodied cooperation. Here we see the bridge between Schmidt et al. (1994),

with its primitive role differentiation of leaderfollower, and the more complex role

differentiations that occur in a complex group such as a sports team. But the basic

point is the same; roles collect degrees of freedom from the players freelancing as

individuals and put them into efficient organizations where everyone doesnt try to

do everything. This, for me, is what proper orderings of parts and wholes are allabout. Here coordination is a means, not an end; roles, not isolated actions, are co-

ordinated. That is, the person is acting as a team member, doing teamwork. At this

level of organization we can speak of embodied cooperation.

THREE MODELS FOR TREATING THE INTERPHASEBETWEEN COORDINATION AND COOPERATION

In the course of trying to order the complex relations between coordination and

cooperation I suggest three models of the interphase: (1) the formation of a

self-organized, dynamical system reflecting circular causality; (2) the shifts in

effectivities and utilization of new affordances that occur when aggregates assem-

ble into groups, that is, the group as a tool structure; (3) the operation of a so-

cial-rule model oriented around Margaret Gilberts (1996) I to We model of joint

commitment as the basis of forming a social unit and the consequences thereof. It is

critical at this point to understand that these models are all necessary to capturethe complexity of the coordination-cooperation relationship. In effect, each model

is incomplete; together they complement each other. Our theoretical strategy is

not either/or but rather this and that (Bois, 2006). Further, beyond the abovemultimodel approach to the coordination-cooperation relationship, I propose trust

as a central player in all these models. I do this because, in so doing, I hope to estab-

lish the multidimensional nature of trust as both an antecedent and consequence

of coordination and cooperation.

The Dynamical System Model

The proposition that coordination is embedded in team play can be unpacked in

terms of the operation of a complex, dynamical system generated by the process of

self-organization From this perspective coordination begins as a local dynamics



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tween individuals and their environment. Viewed most broadly, in the course of

the local dynamics of, for example, playing the game, individual players perceive

that their individual response capabilities are no longer adequate to achieve impor-

tant goals, leading them to explore other options. When this occurs at a collective

levelthere is common information available regarding the insufficiency of the

current environmentactions then become more interconnected leading to the

transition from an aggregate to a team. This process of self-organization reflects a

symmetry-breaking process whereby organisms shift from individual to collective

action. I treat the shift to team play as breaking a Nash Equilibrium (Nash. 1950),

in the sense that players abandon individualistic patterns of play when collective or

coordinated action promises better outcomes. Symmetry-breaking in this context

involves a phase transition or in Lewinian terms, an unfreezing process or quali-

tative change.

This view of symmetry-breaking can be used to model everything from the for-

mation of a slime mold (Garfinkel, 1987), to the formation of a wolf pack, to the

formation of a study group. In sum, common reactions to individual states of defi-

ciency lead to the emergence of a group structure bottom upa team is created

that transforms coordinated individual actions into team play or cooperative ac-

tion top down. That is, the emergence of a team creates what Campbell (1990)

referred to as downward causation. The result is a self-organized, coordinative

structurethe teamwhich reflects a relationship of circular causality between

local and global dynamicsbetween coordination and cooperation. That is, local

dynamics leads to the emergence of a global dynamics, which, in turn, modifies the

local dynamics so that individual action is replaced by teamwork. Such coalitions

may be fragile or uneasy (Kelman, 1997), resembling what Nicolis & Prigogine

(1989) have referred to as far from equilibrium systems. Such systems can more

easily adapt to rapidly changing environments. Further, in the social realm, far

from equilibrium systems map on to what Granovetter (1973) has referred to as

the strength of weak ties which is the opposite of highly cohesive, groupthink

(Janis, 1972) types of organizations, that is, groups that stifle individual initiatives.

Specifically, groups characterized by loose ties are better able to build bridges or

connections to other groups. There are of course boundary conditions for such sys-

tems. In sports, for example, teams organized this way likely function better in fast

break or breakaway situations, which are essentially opportunistic and require or-

ganizations that change on the fly. They may not do as well in half-court sets

where stable plans of actions involving the discipline of set plays are necessary. In

business, for example, there are environments where Apple types of organizations

perform better than IBM types of organizations and vice versa.

The earlier discussion of how a dynamical systems approach may be used to

model the relationship between coordination and cooperation is important at two

levels First it provides a dynamical analysis of the operation of team play as a way

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as the differential effects of strong and loose ties. Further, once coordinations be-

come embedded in team play the coordinations are between roles rather than be-tween individuals (see the following section).

Cooperation, Affordances, and Effectivities

A second model involves understanding embodied cooperation in terms of

affordance-effectivity relationships. Basically, the occurrence of cooperation as a

bottom up process is elaborated by specifying changes in both effectivities and

the pickup of affordances. This approach is, in effect, complementary to the dy-

namical systems type of model in the sense that it provides a functional context for

self-organization. Specifically, the group is viewed as a functional unit that oper-

ates as a type of metatool that enhances individual response capabilities so as to

make reachable affordances that couldnt be reached at the individual level. For

example, the emergence of a slime mold affords the attainment of food supplies at a

distant location. Similarly, being able to attack in a pack changes the edibility

affordances of larger animals for wolves. That is, larger animals that would defeat

individual wolves can now be attacked. At the human level examples abound. For

example, students form study groups when reading assignments exceed individual

capabilities. At the other extreme, individuals who are picked upon may join to-

gether to form a gang to protect themselves. Once formed in this way, cooperation

typically involves a coordination of roles, as for example, in a study group when stu-

dents divide up the material. In such cases, coordinations are means rather thanends; here we do not seek coordinations for the sake of being coordinated. We seekcoordinations that (1) improve response capabilities through teamwork and (2)

make available a greater range of affordances, be they edibility, winning in a team

sport, or doing better on an exam.

Most broadly dynamical processes of self-organization are clearly in the service

of effectivities (enhancing capabilities) and the concomitant ability to utilize a

wider range of affordances. Recent research by Richardson, Marsh, and Baron (in

press) makes clear the formal similarity between extending response capabilities

with a mechanical tool (regarding graspability or lifting) and the switch from one

person to a two-person mode of joint grasping or lifting. In effect cooperation arises

out of the formation of a social unit, given that being in a social unit changes the

perception and utilization of liftability. At the most general level, Richardson et al.

(2006) are moving toward a situation where two people are able to perceive what

Mark (this issue) refers to as a collective affordance. For example, people recog-

nize that as individuals they cannot lift a large log but with another person they can

(Asch, 1952). Such reciprocal perceptions can, in turn, be seen as the basis for co-

ordinated action in a goal-directed sequence. But although the perception of a

collective affordance may constitute a necessary condition for joint action is it



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The Social Rule Model

Gilbert (1996) provides a model of the coordination of individuals into a social unit

that provides another way of looking at how social organization operates. She as-sumes that the formation of a social unit implies a joint commitment to that unit

(Gilbert, 1996). The I has become a we. This we, however, is fragile at the

dyadic level, given that nonreciprocating of any one member of the social unit dis-

solves the unit. For example, we cannot unilaterally change organized movement

patterns and be a good team player. In effect, being a member of a social unit im-

plies following certain rules revolving around what it means to be a responsible

member of the social unit. Such rules flow from individuals becoming group mem-

bers. In Gilberts terms, the I becomes a we. In this mode, weact as members of a so-

cial unit; we act as a body (Gilbert, 2005) and, as a member of that body, we takeon certain obligations. Rules are principles that regulate social action within a so-

cial unit. Unlike laws, rules can be volitionally breached (Hodges & Baron, 1992)

but at a price. If the rules breached are central to the proper operation of a social

unit, be it a dyad or a group, the stability of the unit is threatened and people acting

with the authority of the body can rebuke rule-breakers (see Gilbert, 2005). Like

roles, rules help master degrees of freedom. For example, coordinations occur

within certain bounds; only certain plays fit the game plan. Proper plays are those

that are consistent with the collective values of the group. For example, a team that

stresses defense uses a more restricted range of offensive plays.In sports there are rules associated with roles that embody coordinations. For

example, a point guard is supposed to give preference to passing the ball before

shooting it; for the team player, the I gives way to the we. Failure to follow rules has

consequences at a number of levels. When a group, as opposed to a dyad, is rule

regulated and group size is large, the deviant individual is likely to be dropped. That

is, often occupants of role-organized systems are interchangeable at the group

level; carrying out the role is crucial, not who carries it out. Indeed, in sports this

becomes the basis of why one player is substituted for another. What is needed is

the execution of the role-based coordination. At issue is whether people are enact-

ing their roles properlythat is, performing the functions associated with their po-

sition in a social organization.

It should be noted that, in this situation, proper performance of roles and rules

as a scaffolding for cooperation implies a social deep structure whereby Gilberts

(1996) social contract gets its force and its sense of obligation. At one level, rules

are followed and roles performed because this facilitates the success of the group,

for example, winning in a team sport. More generally, rules are means to realizing

goals, which, in turn, may be the means for realizing values (Hodges, personal

communication, July 30, 2006); one such value may be an evolutionary-based

stricture against social cheating Although I accept the general utility of such a for-

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maintenance of a particular behavior setting. Which values take the lead is from

my perspective specific to a behavior setting, be it driving a car or confronting pres-

sure from a group.

From this contextual perspective, the impact of size needs to be examined if we

are to understand proper relations among rules, roles and values. Barker (1968), forexample, demonstrates that deviants are expelled from large groups whereas a

small group attempts to reform them. Caporael and Baron (1997) provide a process

analysis that proposes that different size groups provide different environments for

the evolution and development of proper functions (p. 339). For example, mi-

cro-coordinations involving face-to-face interactions are likely with dyads includ-

ing motherchild interactions, friendship formation, and sexual relations. With

larger groups face-to-face coordinations are replaced by role-mediated interactions

whereby nonverbal communication is embedded in a linguistic context. For exam-

ple, the coordinations required among blockers, a passer, and a receiver in Ameri-

can football, a sport entailing large-group constraints, involve verbally mediated

complex plays in addition to eye contact. On the other hand, dyadic coordination

between a pitcher and catcher can utilize nonverbal cues or signs such as one raised

finger meaning a curve ball or two raised fingers meaning a fastball, and so on. That

is, baseball more readily decomposes to separable dyadic units than football.

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF TRUST

The concept of proper acting implied by role, in turn, takes us into a closer exami-

nation of a concept I consider crucial to the occurrence of human joint action at all

levels of size: trust. I propose that it is trust that provides the glue for Gilberts

(1996) I to We social contract, not merely the fear of being rebuked or being

treated as an outsider (Gilbert, 2005). And it is trust that makes both individual

and role-based coordination possible. Moreover, it is trust that gives coordination

and cooperation a moral dimension, that is, the sense that certain ways of doing

things are right and other ways of doing things are wrong. For example, it is clear

that violating someones trust is wrong. That is, we rely on other people to act re-

sponsibly. This becomes another way to talk about what it means to act properly.

Indirect support for the importance of trust is the vast literature that exists on the

consequence of not living up to such obligations; that is, group sanctions occur

when individuals engage in social cheating (Shackelford, 1997).

Trust is the bridge or connection that allows coordinated actions to begin and to

persist and trust is the scaffolding that links trajectories of goal-directed move-

ment. In many sports the receiver has to be in the right place at the right time to re-

ceive a pass.3 In effect, people move to certain positions because they trust the

other person to deliver the goods there In baseball for example the pitcher trusts



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the catchers signs for a particular type of pitch, be it a fastball or a curve, etc. The

catcher trusts the pitcher to follow his signs. Failure of such coordinations to occur

can result ina wild pitch or injury to the catcher as when heexpects a curveball and

receives a fastball. Most importantly, trust is embodied in the anticipatory move-ments of the catcher. Moreover, the way trust changes coordination to cooperation

in a given coordination sequence is by allowing mutually beneficial consequences

to occur; for example, by the occurrence of patterns of action over time involving

the pitchers striking out batters repeatedly.

Trust, in this context, defines what is proper joint action, thereby implicating val-

ues in the sense that now we can go beyond distinguishing between a stable or un-

stable coordination. There are also right or wrongjoint actions (Hodges & Baron,

1992). Given the role of trust, this moral dimension is entailed by a joint commit-ment to a relationship or a social units persisting over time.4 For example, in base-

ball, pitchers often have favorite catchers who are the only catchers they trust.

Where there is a cooperative relationship that becomes long term, we have what

might be called collaboration. Trust is now embodied in the strong reciprocity of thelocal social unit. This is not, however always good for the team because loyalty to a

dyadic relationship might compromise the welfare of the team. For example, a pre-

ferred catcher may be a weaker hitter than the regular team catcher. This is an-

other example of the negative effects of strong ties; within a group, a highly cohe-

sive subunit can undermine intragroup cooperation between that unit and thebroader entitythe team. The conflicts between different Muslim sects in Iraq un-

dermining unity at the level of the country is this principle scaled to another level.

That is, if the sects were less internally cohesive, bridges between sects become

more possible.

Trust also provides support for the proposition that ecological psychology has

taken a loan on sociality. It can be claimed, by way of further generality of my treat-

ment of trust, that trust is what allows experimental studies of coordination to

work. For example, trust in the experimenters instructions gets the coordination

to occur in the first place. Further, the findings of Schmidt et al. (1994) that Hi-Lopairings were more stable than Hi-Hi or Lo-Lo pairings could reflect greater collec-

tive trust in the leader-follower condition. That is, it may be hypothesized that trust

is more highly reciprocated in this condition. This study is of particular interest be-

cause trust can be said to be embodied in the social unit. Indeed in the Hi-Lo con-

dition a kind of magnet effect may have occurred with the social unit functioning

as an attractor for coordination. In this context it should be noted that the hyster-

esis effect found by Richardson et al. (in press), whereby participants persist in joint

lifting well beyond when they physically need the other person, can be interpreted

as the social unit becoming a strong attractor. For example, the motivation for

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turning to another person may shift from a physical need for help to enjoying the

jointness of the activity. Further, recent research (Brooks, King-Casas, et al.,

2005) suggests that trust does more than moderate motoric coordinations. Using

MRI brain scan techniques, reciprocal changes in areas of brain activity were found

to track trusting exchanges in a simulated business transaction involving repay-

ments of invested money. Specifically, there was correlated activity in the middle

of the cingulate cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex between and within per-

sons. (The brain area involved was the dorsal striatum.)

Trust, in the context of coordination, can function as both an extrinsic and in-

trinsic control parameter. Extrinsically, as an environmental trigger, a certain level

of trust is needed to get subjects to pass through a phase transition such as switch-

ing from working alone to working cooperatively (Richardson et al., in press). In-

trinsically, trust as the product or the output of successful coordinations can be-

come an input to new cycles of joint, self-organized activity. In the more traditional

language of variables, trust is both a moderator and a mediator. As a moderator, it

strengthens or weakens relations between other variables, for example,

coordinative relations (Baron & Kenny, 1986). As a moderator it can operate at

both local and global levels. At a global level, for example, trust can be a climate or

zeitgeist as in the Middle East where the social climate has changed from mild trust

to strong distrust, thereby dampening the possibility of cooperation occurring in

the form of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis. Wearing its other hat as a

mediator, working trust can transform negative attitudes to positive ones, open-

ing people up to negotiations (Kelman, 1997). Here trust makes it possible to over-

come barriers.

THE FRAGILITY OF TRUST

For all its importance trust is fragile connective tissue. It is never a final state of af-

fairs; it perpetually needs to be earned. Specifically within the trust literature, it ap-

pears that trust itself is subject to hysteresis: (1) it is easier to destroy trust than to

create trust (Kramer & Carnevale, 2003; Lewicki & Weithoff, 2000); (2) it is easier

to create trust than to restore it once it is lost. Trust may be fragile because it is

working against the intrinsic strength of the maintenance tendency; it pushes peo-

ple to exchange independence for the benefits of being part of a social unit. That is,

individuals become role players who accommodate to the team. Viewed this way,

trust prevents the intrinsic dynamics of individual preferences from re-emerging.

In this sense, competitive tendencies never completely go away. They are compro-

mised by the existence of trust which I propose is the foundation of team play.

My further claim is that trust is highly complex because it is more than embod-

ied proper joint action What develops over time with trust is that people begin to



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mon outlook. It is also likely that having a common outlook or definition of the sit-

uation will facilitate trust. In particular, Kelman (1997) uses his conflict resolution

workshops between Palestinians and Israelis to create an interphasing of common-

ality of outlook and working trust. Specifically, Palestinians and Israelis are asked

to jointly come up with recommendations to overcome barriers to peace talks. The

idea of overcoming barriers jointly harkens back to Sherifs (1966) Robbers Cave

intervention where a broken down bus had to be moved jointly.

HOW THE GROUP CAN BE IN THE INDIVIDUALAND THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE GROUP

Perhaps the best case for the foundational nature of trust is that it helps us under-

stand how the individual can be in the group and the group in the individual. Spe-

cifically, the duality structure rests on there being reciprocity between the individ-

uals commitment to the group and the groups commitment to the individual. This

joint commitment is a way of understanding the level of cohesiveness in a group. In

the present context this becomes a means of better understanding how team play

comes about.

When a group is team-oriented players trust each other and the coach, in turn,

trusts the players. Ironically, when social bonds are based on trust we make our-

selves vulnerable because we count on others to act responsibly (Levin, 2007).

However, in team-oriented groups there is an acceptable risk that our actions will

be appropriately reciprocated, be they a pass in a sport, a business investment, or a

simple limb movement to establish a joint, comfortable tempo of action.

Coordinations in such groups flow from joint commitments that are earned, not or-

dained. It is trust that makes this type of interdependence work.

And it is the lack of trust that makes groupthink so deadening. Why? Because

when group-level trust is low, the executive structure must then pay the price of

constantly monitoring behavior for compliance to rules. In groupthink-type orga-

nizations, actions, including coordinations, are tightly scripted. On-line creativity

is not permitted. Another way to say this is that in loose-tie groups where trust un-

derlies the nature of the bonding, there is room for the individual to be both part of

a group and yet retain individual degrees of freedom. In effect, such groups are suc-

cessful because there is an ever-shifting figure-ground relationship between main-

tenance and magnet effects, between individual creativity and social obligation. In

sports, such a team is equally effective in fast-break opportunities where individual

creativity is important and half-court sets where disciplined team play is necessary.

In such organizations, who performs what role is also flexible. Indeed, when Larry

Bird was the member of the Boston Celtics basketball team, there emerged a flexi-

ble role organization that allowed him to create a new position a point forward

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high level of trust among team members. In such groups, it may be said that roles

have fuzzy boundaries. Roles with fuzzy boundaries, in turn, provide a mecha-

nism for reconciling individuality and groupness.5

In sum, groups that are structured around trust trade the predictability of

groupthink for flexibility and organizational charts for on-line shifts in organiza-

tion. In such groups one cannot hide behind roles; even the leadership structure

must earn the trust of the players or employees as the case may be. In such groups,

climate is more than a matter of context; it is self-organized and emergent. Thus,

we can speak of a particular group as having a cooperative as opposed to a selfish

climate. Going back to the language of Caporael and Baron (1997), this climate

then becomes the environment within which members establish coordinations and

carry out proper functions. To be specific, members of a study group thusly struc-

tured will continue to work jointly even after the exam period is over. In effect, a

task-oriented basis of group organization may persist even when its task is com-

pleted. Finally, up until now, I have eschewed a formal definition of trust, depend-

ing rather on seeing it as an assemblage of functions rooted in reciprocity. In order

to demonstrate that trust is more than a convenient theoretical construct, we be-

gin the task of specifying when and how the presence of trust can be known.

DEPENDABILITY AND PROTO-TRUST

In order to understand how trust entails reciprocity, I propose it is necessary to see

how trust is linked to interdependence in the sense that the context for trust is a

state of collective vulnerability or joint need. Given this joint need, I propose that

people search for others who can be perceived as dependable. Such a person, in the

language of negotiations, is seen as an honest broker. More specifically I suggest

that dependability, in this context, is a kind of incipient or proto-trustliterally a

search for another person worthy of trust. The provisional nature of trust at this

point is also indicated by Kelmans (1997) term working trust.I prefer the term dependability in this context for a number of reasons, begin-

ning with an assumption that it is easier to conceive of dependability as an embod-

ied state of affairs, as for example, a way of doing things that indicates the reliability

of the occurrence of that action. Further, I suggest that dependability so conceived

can be treated as a social affordance that fits Runeson and Frykholms (1981) Kine-

matic Specification of Dynamics (KSD) principle. That is, I propose that depend-

ability can be embodied in patterns of action that can be tracked perceptually. For

example, I hypothesize that there can be information that specifies an intent to be


5This interpretation of roles may also be framed in terms of the degrees of freedom problem. Spe-


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dependable. Dependability also likely fits Marks (this issue) conception of a com-

mon affordance. For example, if I need help with my car when it doesnt start and I

can rely on my neighbor to either give me a jump start or give me a lift to work,

and I do the same for him, we have what I would designate as a joint affordance for

dependability in the car realm. When this joint affordance becomes embedded in a

more complex social relationship, for example, we carpool regularly, I would move

from labeling the relationship as dependability to referring to it as one involving

trust.

TRUST AS A RELATIONAL CONCEPT

In effect, joint dependability scales up to trust when it becomes part of a committed

relationship that evolves over time. Within such a relationship one cannot in good

faith breach this social contract unilaterally. In my earlier terms, when dependabil-

ity involves more than two Is occasionally helping each other, that is, when it is

part of a We relationship, I suggest that we use the term trust. More generally

then, trust is a social construction that is grounded in joint affordances of depend-

ability. Trust so construed makes proper social coordinations possible (Hodges &

Baron, 1992); it is a hedge for our vulnerability.

To further appreciate my proposal that dependability scales up to trust in a com-

mitted relationship, it is necessary to move beyond the dyadic example. Here I am

following the logic of Caporael and Barons (1997) evolutionary analysis of the re-

lationship between increases in group size and changes in the proper functions of

social units. I have, in effect, anticipated this treatment of trust in my discussion of

role-based coordination. Within this view of role-based relations, trust becomes an

even more crucial concept. Indeed, this is the essence of what team play is all

about. For example, dependability refers to what another person will do as an indi-

vidual playerhe/she is a dependable rebounder or shooter. Trust refers to what

this player will do in the framework of a team or organization. Indeed the failure of

American-trained basketball players to play as a team has undermined the success

of U.S. teams in international competition against European teams who are less tal-

ented but do play as a team. Recently, a professional basketball player in the United

States, Stephon Marbury, who had such problems, said it best: We dont trust

Coach, and Coach does not trust us (Bergen Record, April 18, 2006).Note in particular the reciprocal focus of Marburys statement. This firsthand

report is consistent with my proposition that trust is best understood as a collec-

tive-level concept. Trust is clearest and most necessary at the level of part-whole

relations within a group, as opposed to part-part relations. Viewed thus, trust be-

comes an index of the joint commitment of the group to the individual and the in-

dividual to the group This index gives us a way of understanding the cohesiveness

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out of such temporally extended joint commitments and is what makes possible

such joint commitments. As an antecedent state, this constitutes Kelmans work-

ing trust and as a product of such jointly committed relationshipsor systems of

role-based coordinationswe have what might be referred to at a collective level

as a climate of trust. This climate of trust, in turn, reflects a dynamic tension

between a majority faction (forces toward order) and a minority faction (forces to-

ward disorder). At a molar level this becomes another way to understand trust. It is

also here that we can see why fragility may be an asset. At a collective level, what

keeps a group honest is the presence of an active minority faction or in dynamic

terms, a secondary attractor. Further, a climate of trust can be understood as a col-

lective affordance applying to groups, communities and even niches.

Viewed this way, our analysis has preceded from dependability, a property of in-

dividual parts, to trust in a dyadic, committed relationship (part-part relations) to

trust within a larger grouppart-whole relationswhere we speak of a climate of

trust. At the level of proper functions, dependency-trust differs somewhat at dif-

ferent sizes of the social unit as follows: (1) Dependability allows people to know

whom to call on for what. Here the coordinations are largely of informational re-

sources. (2) Trust as part of a committed relationship requires a collaborative coor-

dination over time for an ongoing project. The existence of the unit depends on a

We- level reciprocity of actions. (3) When whole-part relations are the focus,

intragroup relations not only affect internal relations within the group but also

have implications for intergroup relationsfor example, the ability to form bridges

of trust with other groups. (4) Trust, viewed as a climate, not only works at the

small-group level but can pervade a cultural context or zeitgeist as in the Middle

East (Baron, 2003).

It should be noted that when I talk of climate I am staying within a tight dy-

namical framework. Specifically, I regard this climate effect as an emergent struc-

ture generated by the same, circular dynamic process I described earlier; however,

the units are social groups rather than individuals. This pattern of circular causality

can be illustrated in the following example. Local group interactions lead to the

emergence of a climate of distrust in the Middle East. This climate of distrust, in

turn, undermines small-group peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israe-

lis. For example, the Kelman-type of conflict resolution workshops are no longer

being run. In this regard I see what I am doing with trust as consistent with what

Iberall (1987) has done in terms of deriving macro-units such as the origin of civili-

zations from micro-level dynamic origins.

MIXED-MODE SOCIAL KNOWING REVISITED

I have up until this point largely ignored the epistemological issues raised by my



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or between groups. For example, Kean (2000) has demonstrated that observers can

perceive whether other people, based on point light information alone, are engag-

ing in cooperative or competitive joint actions. Such data suggest that trusting re-

lations can be transparent perceptually in certain reciprocal actions. For example,

it can be assumed that perceptions of trustworthiness influence online interactions

such as that between a pitcher and a catcher involving the communications of

nonverbal signs. In this context, perceptions of trust are also reciprocally transpar-

ent in the sense that an observer could view such sequences and discern which

pitchercatcherdyads were high in trust (see Marks, this issue, for studies of others

intentions consistent with this line of reasoning). Such interpretations can be

tested. I propose looking at videos of interacting groups to ascertain whether it is

possible to perceive variations in level of trust when only nonverbal information is

available. Fortunately, Kelman (1997) has videos available of such groups with and

without voice, allowing the possibility of directly testing this kind of hypothesis.

Epistemologically, however, the situation is more complex. Thus, although I

generally agree with the strategy of ecological psychology to push perceptual-

grounding as far as possible, I have long felt there needs to be openness to less pure

epistemic processes in regard to social knowing (cf. Baron, 1980, 1981). For exam-

ple, Baron and Boudreau (1987) proposed that depending on the opportunities for

direct observation and/or the availability of embodied information, social

affordances may be directly perceived, inferred or involve a mixture of perception

and inference. Recent work by Dunbar provides an evolutionary rationale for when

one has to invoke categorical processes. For example, Dunbar (1993) proposes that

as group size increases, face-to-face contacts become more limited, which, in turn,

leads to the development of linguistically-based categorical processes.

Another way to frame this problem is to build on the concept of a social

Pi-number as proposed by Marsh, Richardson, Baron, and Schmidt (2006). Al-

though they introduced this concept in the context of understanding when indi-

viduals will shift from solo to joint lifting, I suggest extending this concept to

epistemic matters. Specifically, I propose we look at the possibility of a social know-

ing Pi-number for when we shift from direct perception to category-based infer-

ence, or for that matter in Neissers (1976) term, category-based perception.

(See, however, Schmidt, this issue, for a unitary model of perception that would

treat trust as having long-term event properties and hence, being directly perceiv-

able.)

In principle then, if the shift from individual to joint action involves a response

to deficiencies in the physical environment, why not assume that informational

problems have the same effect? For example, the formation of a study group may be

seen as generating distributed cognition as a response to individual level informa-

tion overload. In on-line situations when sharings are not possible, going beyond

the information given (Bruner 1957 p 41) may occur cognitively at the individ-

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mixed-mode processing. On the other hand, I find it easier to assume that depend-

ability can be directly perceived, particularly in light of research that demonstrates

that caring as a mode of carrying can be informationally specified (Hodges &

Lindhiem, 2006). Finally, perhaps dependability fits the paradigm of a social

affordance to be discovered, whereas trust is emergent within the social interaction

process (Stoffregen, 2000). That is, trust is less a state of a person and more a state

of affairs between two or more people that is a work in progress.

CONCLUSIONS

The reader should now be able to understand why I proposed that coordinationand cooperation can be situated between ecological and social psychology. This

strategy has in effect involved unpacking Turveys (1990) proper relations interpre-

tation of coordination. The unifying thread in my analysis has been the proposition

that social psychology is also concerned with the problem of establishing proper re-

lations between parts (e.g., dyads) and part-whole relations (individual-groups).

Disparate concepts such as roles and trust have been harnessed to try to establish a

functional basis for the meaning of proper relations. Hopefully, this analysis will

make clear why we can no longer postpone a collaboration between social and eco-

logical psychology. Furthermore, the introduction of constructs such as role, trust,and the strength of weak ties does not introduce unruly degrees of freedom. On

the contrary, if treated in the embodied, dynamical way I suggest, they, in Turveys

(1990) terms, will help us master degrees of freedom. When this occurs, coopera-

tion will no longer just be an isolated phenomenon to be studied; it will also de-

scribe the relationships between ecological and social psychology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Preparation of this article was supported by National Science Foundation Grant

BSC-034802, awarded to Kerry L. Marsh, Claudia Carello, Reuben Baron, and M.

L. Richardson.

Portions of this paper were presented at the Thirteenth International Confer-

ence on Perception and Action, Monterey, CA, July 10, 2005, and at a colloquium

for the Psychology Department, University of Portsmouth, UK, in September 2006.

I acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of Bert Hodges, Harry Heft,

Richard Schmidt, and Joan Boykoff Baron on earlier drafts of this article.

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