Just One Thing for Parents with Dr Bettina Hohnen
Sep 4, 2026 · 28 min · 7 segments
What's just one thing you can do when you feel like you just can't get through to your child? Dr Russell Woodhead is a clinical psychologist whose therapeutic work is built around exactly this…
Russell WoodheadGuest
Bettina HohnenHost
So I'm going to talk a little bit about a concept called epistemic trust, which really means trust in knowledge.
And if it's all right with you Bettina, I'm going to make a little detour into our evolutionary history.
Because I think it's important to understand the background in terms of where we come from as humans.
Can I just ask you just to repeat what epistemic trust is? I think there was...
And the reason this relates to our history as animals is that one fairly unique characteristic of human beings is the extent to which we rely on social learning for our survival.
And, you know, unlike a spider, say, who was born knowing how to, has an instinct as to how to make a web and catch food.
And all of these vital skills, along with this whole vast library of other useful pieces of information, are passed on from one generation to the next.
And it's this collective knowledge and cooperation that's a huge part of what's made us successful as a species.
But there's a vulnerability there and there's a problem that this presents for evolution because we've had to develop some way of filtering information, of knowing what knowledge is likely to be relevant, correct and trustworthy.
So if we were just like sponges, just like soaking up information, data from other people the whole time, then A, we'd just be overwhelmed with conflicting information.
And B, we'd be really, really open to abuse to people taking advantage of us, those who don't have our best interests at heart.
So what we've developed is sort of a switch, right, that flicks on when certain conditions are met and it makes us receptive to new information.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about a concept called epistemic trust, which really means trust in knowledge.
And if it's all right with you Bettina, I'm going to make a little detour into our evolutionary history.
Because I think it's important to understand the background in terms of where we come from as humans.
Can I just ask you just to repeat what epistemic trust is? I think there was...
And the reason this relates to our history as animals is that one fairly unique characteristic of human beings is the extent to which we rely on social learning for our survival.
And, you know, unlike a spider, say, who was born knowing how to, has an instinct as to how to make a web and catch food.
And all of these vital skills, along with this whole vast library of other useful pieces of information, are passed on from one generation to the next.
And it's this collective knowledge and cooperation that's a huge part of what's made us successful as a species.
But there's a vulnerability there and there's a problem that this presents for evolution because we've had to develop some way of filtering information, of knowing what knowledge is likely to be relevant, correct and trustworthy.
So if we were just like sponges, just like soaking up information, data from other people the whole time, then A, we'd just be overwhelmed with conflicting information.
And B, we'd be really, really open to abuse to people taking advantage of us, those who don't have our best interests at heart.
So what we've developed is sort of a switch, right, that flicks on when certain conditions are met and it makes us receptive to new information.
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