I used to believe we were rational beings steadily progressing toward a better future. That our collective intelligence would naturally lead us to optimal solutions for our shared challenges. That evolution meant progress.
I was wrong.
As I've grown older and witnessed what's happening in our world—from climate inaction to the erosion of democratic norms to our inability to coordinate global responses to existential threats—I've come to understand something fundamental about evolution and human decision-making.
As my friend and colleague David Sloan Wilson wisely observes, "Evolution does not always take us where we want to go."
Beyond Individual Thinking: How Environments Shape Our Decisions
When we look at how groups make decisions, it's easy to focus on individual people—their intelligence, their personality, their intentions. But that misses something crucial: people don't make decisions in a vacuum. Our choices are shaped by the environments we're in—the social pressures, the reward systems, the stories we tell about who we are and what matters.
I remember a long time ago I used to teach MBA students a model of decision making from the 1970’s called the Garbage Can Model of decision making. The simple idea was that decisions emerge from the random collision of problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities, rather than from systematic analysis. I used to be amused by this idea - as though the proponents of the model were silly for giving up so easily on rationality. But now I see that their thinking must have emerged from experience. Collective decisions are often the result of the intersection of these random processes.
Evolution helps us see that group decisions aren't purely rational calculations. They're more like adaptations that emerge from our surroundings. The ideas and behaviours that survive aren't necessarily the best ones—they're the ones that fit the environment they're in.
This perspective shifts our attention from "who's making bad decisions?" to "what about this environment makes certain decisions more likely than others?"
What Research Shows: Seven Ways Group Decisions Go Wrong
1. Power Structures Filter What Ideas Survive
Research consistently shows that environments where power is unevenly distributed tend to select ideas that maintain that distribution—regardless of whether those ideas serve the group's stated purpose.
I experienced this first-hand in academia, where a newly appointed deputy vice chancellor implemented unilateral control measures over research publications. What began as "raising standards" quickly became a system of arbitrary metrics and implied threats that created a culture of fear.
When I and others tried advocating for approaches that would better support quality research, we found ourselves systematically side-lined. It wasn't just one person making bad choices—it was an environment where challenging authority had real costs, so fewer people did it, which meant fewer alternative perspectives survived.
2. Avoiding Discomfort Drives Group Behaviour
Groups, like individuals, tend to avoid uncomfortable situations—even when facing that discomfort might lead to better long-term outcomes.
Like water carving its path through stone, our collective patterns of behaviour create deep grooves over time that guide our decisions. These paths, formed through countless repetitions, develop a momentum that's difficult to redirect without deliberate intervention.
I witnessed this while working with a hospital that initially embraced ProSocial World’s approach to improving collaboration, publicly committing to empowering staff at all levels. Yet when facing the real discomfort of redistributing authority, the organization reverted to familiar hierarchical patterns.
Despite evidence that their power structures were causing burnout and coordination problems, leadership couldn't tolerate the uncertainty of change. The environment selected for the comfortable and familiar over the potentially better but uncomfortable.
3. The Stories We Tell Narrow What Seems Possible
The language we use and the stories we tell ourselves don't just describe reality—they help create it by making some options seem obvious and others unthinkable.
When a group defines itself as "practical" or "traditional," these labels start filtering ideas before they're even consciously evaluated. A solution might be perfectly workable but gets eliminated because it doesn't fit the story the group tells about itself.
4. Short-Term Rewards Dominate Long-Term Thinking
In most organizations, environments are structured to reward immediate results and punish immediate failures—even when stated values emphasize long-term thinking.
This isn't just about impatience. It's about which behaviours get reinforced in the moment versus which ones might pay off later. When someone who focuses on quarterly results gets promoted while someone investing in long-term change gets side-lined, the environment is teaching everyone a clear lesson about what really matters.
5. First Thoughts Crowd Out Better Ideas
When groups discuss issues, early opinions tend to have outsized influence, creating a cascade effect where later contributors align with established perspectives rather than offering genuine alternatives.
Without practices that help groups hold initial ideas lightly rather than latching onto them, environments naturally select for quick convergence over thorough exploration.
6. What “Everyone Knows” Drowns Out What Individuals Know
Research consistently shows that groups primarily discuss information everyone already shares rather than unique knowledge held by individuals.
This happens because sharing something everyone knows is socially safer than introducing information that might contradict the emerging consensus. The environment selects for social harmony over complete information.
7. We Follow Norms Nobody Actually Likes
In a fascinating pattern called pluralistic ignorance, groups often maintain norms that most members privately question but publicly uphold because they (incorrectly) believe others support them.
The environment selects for public agreement over authentic expression, creating situations where harmful practices persist despite limited actual support.
I've sat in countless rooms where people nod along with policies and practices I later discover most of them privately questioned. This pattern—where groups maintain norms that most members secretly doubt—creates a painful disconnect between what we actually value and how we actually behave.
It seems to me that we're living with a profound form of pluralistic ignorance about progress itself. For years, I believed we were steadily marching toward a better future—that rationality and good intentions would inevitably lead to positive outcomes. What's striking is how many conversations I've had recently where people admit, in quiet moments, that they too have lost faith in this narrative of inevitable progress. Yet publicly, many of us (including myself) continue acting as if we still believe in it—writing strategic plans with optimistic projections, speaking confidently about growth and advancement, nodding along with techno-optimist solutions.
This Isn't Just About Better Meetings
These patterns help explain our collective struggles with humanity's biggest challenges:
- Climate policies shaped more by existing power structures than scientific evidence
- Public health measures undermined by group identities and the stories we tell about them
- Economic systems that reward short-term profits over long-term sustainability
- Democratic institutions vulnerable to manipulation by those who understand these very patterns
What we tolerate in our boardrooms, we eventually accept in our legislatures. The decision-making environments we participate in daily become the templates for what we consider normal and acceptable at every level. When we regularly experience power trumping evidence in our workplaces, we become desensitized to seeing the same pattern in our governance. When we accept short-term thinking in our organizations, we lose the standing and perhaps even the capacity to demand long-term thinking from our institutions.
We are, quite literally, evolving ourselves toward outcomes most of us would not choose if we truly understood and could influence the environments shaping our collective choices.
This isn’t someone else's problem. If we want to reclaim power in this situation, we must learn to make decisions in our local groups in ways that reflect the world we are trying to create. We cannot demand from our leaders what we cannot envision or practice ourselves. Our sphere of control begins with the environments we create in our teams, organizations, and communities – these become living examples of what's possible at larger scales.
We can only select for what we can see. If we've never experienced truly inclusive decision-making or evidence-based policy in our immediate environments, how can we recognize its absence in our broader society? By creating microcosms of better decision-making in the spaces where we have influence, we develop both the practical examples and the moral authority to demand better from our larger systems.
A Pivotal Moment in Human History
We now face a moment unlike any other. We're attempting to coordinate human activity at a scale never before achieved—across nations, cultures, and generations.
The environments we've created for making decisions served us in smaller groups with simpler challenges. They are insufficient for what we now face.
This is the time when we ALL need to step up and practice making decisions in ways that recognize and reshape these patterns—approaches that don't let power imbalances, comfort-seeking, limiting stories, short-term thinking, and social pressure dominate our collective choices.
Just as we need bioregional food production for ecological resilience, we need localized skill development in better decision-making for social resilience. We need to consciously design environments that bring out our best rather than our worst.
Creating Better Environments for Decisions
At ProSocial World, we've been exploring practical approaches that acknowledge these patterns while creating better environments for collective choice:
- Make the invisible visible – Rather than letting unspoken dynamics determine which ideas survive, groups can name what's happening and create practices that balance participation across power differences.
- Separate exploration from evaluation – By deliberately creating space for generating possibilities before judging them, groups can prevent premature convergence and surface more diverse options.
- Build regular reflection points – In our own organization, we use fortnightly staff meetings with structured update documents where everyone shares their work, challenges, and achievements. This creates transparency and regular opportunities to adjust course before unhelpful patterns become entrenched.
- Expand who has a voice – Ensuring diverse perspectives genuinely influence which ideas get implemented helps counter the narrowing effects of power imbalances and social pressure.
- Test against purpose, not just preference – Creating feedback loops that check whether decisions are actually advancing shared goals provides a counterbalance to social dynamics that might otherwise select for compatibility with existing structures over effectiveness.
Much like how thoughtfully designed urban spaces—where pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers intuitively navigate shared areas without excessive signs or signals—can bring out better behaviour without heavy control, well-designed decision environments make better choices more likely without requiring perfect people.
Of course, we are far from perfect, and I am constantly reminded that we are all learning together. But being part of this experiment in learning better ways to share power is one of the most satisfying experiences of my life.
Evolution by Design, Not Default
We may not be the purely rational beings I once believed, but we are creatures who have evolved with a remarkable capacity for love, empathy, and cooperation. The paradox is powerful: by using our rationality to understand our irrationality, we can design environments that amplify our better nature and temper our darker impulses.
This isn't about denying who we are. It's about seeing ourselves clearly—both our limitations and our profound social capabilities—and creating contexts that help us be our best selves more consistently.
Evolution won't automatically take us where we want to go. But by consciously shaping the environments in which we make decisions together, we can improve the world one group at a time. In this critical moment of human history, that might make all the difference.
Learn to Create Better Decision Environments
If you want to learn practical approaches for creating better environments in your own teams and communities, join us for the next round of the Becoming ProSocial course starting in April.
Final Thought
Next time you're in a meeting or community gathering, try asking:
"What about our environment is shaping the choices we're making? And is it bringing out our best?"
Then take it a step further:
"If everyone made decisions the way we do here, what kind of world would we create?"
Because better decisions won't evolve by accident. They'll emerge from environments we consciously design to serve what matters most – starting with the groups where we have direct influence. What we practice locally becomes what we can envision globally.
