We are living in a post-truth world, where alternative facts and fake news compete on an equal footing with peer-reviewed research and formerly-authoritative sources such as the United Kingdom's global news and current affairs service, the BBC.
Why is this happening? Many people blame the Internet and the smartphone revolution, but that isn’t the whole story. Technology has exacerbated the problem, for sure, but the underlying social trend here dates back to the pre-computer era. Some people also blame prominent truth-challenged individuals, but we shouldn’t mix up cause and effect: contempt for expert advice is what created the Trump bandwagon, not vice versa.
The post-truth era has emerged because of several long-cycle trends that affect how we make sense of the world around us. The phenomenon even has a name — agnotology, the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt. And it comes in a variety of flavors, from the relatively benign (persuading people through ‘spin’ or selective use of facts) to the deliberately malicious (willful peddling of objectively incorrect information). The implications of agnotology, for business and for politics, are huge.
There are two long-cycle trends that shape our understanding of the world.
First, we are all becoming stupider, on a relative basis. While individual knowledge (measured by IQ) has risen gently and linearly over the last few decades (the so-called Flynn effect), the collective knowledge of mankind has grown exponentially — think in terms of the explosive growth in books written, PhDs completed, or patents registered. The gap between what each one of us knows and what the world knows is growing rapidly.
Second, the worlds of business and politics are becoming more interdependent, in the sense that something happening in one place can have unpredictable second- or third-order consequences in another place. Cyber-attacks, outbreaks of infectious diseases, terrorist threats, political movements, social memes — all of these are manifestations of the “complex system” that is the global economy. Unfortunately, complex systems cannot be modeled accurately. It is a strange paradox of our times: the more we connect, the harder it is for us to predict.
Put these two points together: as individuals, we are struggling to understand the present, and it is getting hard to predict the future. The result is a form of cognitive dissonance. As thoughtful beings, we like to be in control, but increasingly we cannot. So how do we resolve this dissonance? We fall back on belief — on our own intuition.
New York University Professor Jonathan Haidt explains this point as follows. We would like to think we use reasoning and analysis to reach a judgment, for example by looking at the evidence around the dangers of genetically modified crops, and then deciding whether they should be banned or not. In reality, we do the exact opposite: we come to an intuition-based judgment early on (often subconsciously) and then we use that to build a cogent argument for our view, typically by marshalling the supporting evidence and ignoring the evidence that might take us in a different direction.
This is a scary point: it is human nature to jump straight to a judgment, often on the basis of the slenderest of facts and, paradoxically, the more complex and uncertain the issue, the more we tend to trust our intuition. If asked, do you support putting up traffic lights at a busy intersection where you live, you can quickly think through the pros and cons and come to a verdict. If asked, do you support leaving the European Union, the reasoning-based part of your brain goes into meltdown, and the intuitive part takes over.
While this tendency to leap to judgment has always existed, it has become a bigger problem as individuals become (relatively) ignorant and less able to see what’s coming next. Technology then exacerbates the problem, with our Facebook and Twitter feeds creating an echo-chamber of judgments that are often complete devoid of facts. And smart politicians are quick to exploit the trend, tapping into our intuition and subconscious beliefs, rather than boring us with hard evidence. Emotion beats logic in the art of persuasion — a point that the Brexiteers and the Trump campaign understood very well.
So what does this mean for you as a businessperson?
• As an individual, understanding your own biases — your tendency to leap to intuitive conclusions — is already a step forward. Next time you get a gut feel for a course of action, say a new brand slogan, force yourself to step back: what does the hard data say? What is the source of that evidence? What prior experience is causing you to prefer this slogan? And why does a respected colleague have a different intuition? This type of introspective exercise rarely leads you to change your mind, but it helps you to know yourself better, which could come in use next time.
• Perspective taking — seeing the world from someone else’s vantage point — is another useful trick. During the Presidential elections, I would check out Breitbart or Fox News periodically, to see how the pro-Trump narrative was playing out. In business, deliberately putting yourself outside your comfort zone — talking to people who don’t buy your product for example — is a healthy discipline.
• And remember, your most valuable resource is not your time, it is your attention. So be selective about how much information — especially the comfortable, reassuring type — you make time for, and definitely don’t allow it to stream in real time.
If you are leading others, in a position of executive responsibility, there are some additional points to think about.
• Even though we are living in a world of fake news, you have a moral and pragmatic responsibility to stay on the right side of the facts. But don’t be afraid to tap into the intuition of your employees and your customers: you need a combination of logic and emotion. This has always been the essence of good marketing, and it should also be the essence of your corporate communications. People want authentic leaders; a spontaneous speech from the heart beats a written script every time.
• Finally, there is still enormous value in hard scientific evidence when it is marshalled and presented well. Questions like “does social responsibility improve corporate value?” or “Is there a bias against female applicants for executive jobs?” generate lots of opinions. But there are clever and systematic ways of answering these questions, as my colleagues Alex Edmans and Isabel Fernandez Mateo have shown. There is an art to how you present proper social science to a mass audience, but when it is done well, the impact on the discourse can be huge.
