Why We Don't Change

-There’s a Rationale Behind Our Irrationality.

In Newsletter 6 (Knowledge is Power But Relationships are the Wheels) I wrote about a dairy farmer who went out of business in the early 90’s because he refused to entertain organic transition as an option.  I got a few responses to that story, which centered on farmers' stubbornly doing what they have always done.  From the outside, we see it as a tragic and irrational decision to choose failure over change. 

But his decision may be much more rational than we think.

We won't know the real answer, but I think his need to stay in his tribe and maintain his relationships outweighed threatening his social standing to save his farm.  But’s more complicated than that. We aren’t always individual rational actors making rational decisions based on data.

 In his book, “Enlightenment 2.0,” Joseph Heath points out that reasoning is a group activity that serves group ends.  “Reason is both decentralized and dispersed across multiple individuals… rationality is an inherently collective project.”  Groups have more knowledge than individuals.  From an evolutionary standpoint, the ability to aggregate knowledge at the group level gave those groups a greater survival advantage.  For our ancestors, rationalizing our decisions, even ignoring data, to stay with the group consensus was survival itself -access to food and a much better chance of finding a mate within the group.  

 The answer to that cliche Boomer-parent question, “If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” is more likely to be “yes” than we think.  

Yale researcher Dan Kahan and his colleagues have conducted numerous studies showing that people will ignore data or even further entrench in current beliefs based on what the groups they identify with believe. When identity is at stake, we aren’t rational -we rationalize.  When we double down on the information onslaught to change someone’s mind, they’re more likely to dig in further because we have unknowingly threatened their identity.

So what do we do?  When we run up against entrenched beliefs, it’s more productive to stop questioning what someone thinks and get curious about how they see themselves and their identity.  

I hear you.  You have a degree in the hard sciences and this all sounds like a fluffy crock of shit.  But my first and most successful experience with this came in the least fluffy of circumstances –building relationships with Iraq's Abu Issa tribe on the Fallujah Peninsula while their members fought alongside and against us.  In time, we forged tremendous relationships and brought peace to the region together.  In retrospect, a lot of the relationship work was gut feeling, accidents, and luck.  Years later, I have a much better grasp of how and why it worked.  If we can facilitate change among Marines and insurgents during a war, then we apply it to other fields as well. 

In the AI-dominated information age, the alternative path to change is to get better at human to human interaction.  Set the data and arguments aside.  Lead with empathy.