Remember when we all thought the world was flat?   

We don’t believe things because they’re true. We believe them because they’re easy to believe.  As a qualitative researcher, one of the main things I do is help my clients understand how people form opinions and make decisions. Do this long enough and you’ll notice that people believe some crazy stuff. So, I regularly need to figure out why people believe things that are demonstrably untrue.

We live in a world inundated with information. What’s more – newsflash! – a lot of the information we encounter is incorrect. Sometimes this inaccuracy is inadvertent, sometimes it’s deliberate. Figuring out what’s true is increasingly important. And one thing that can make this particularly challenging is that sometimes things that aren’t true just sound like they are.

Cognitive psychologists have a term for this: ‘the illusory truth effect.’ It’s our tendency to believe something simply because it’s familiar – we’ve heard it repeated many times over a long period. This repetition increases what’s called ‘processing fluency,’ which is a fancy way of saying that something is easy to think about. Our brains then mistake that ease for accuracy. If you’ve been told your entire life that the earth is flat, that doesn’t just sound true, it sounds obvious.

I see this as being a problem. When something intuitively sounds true, we’re likely to take it at face value and not challenge it. And this is how lies spread virally. I’m reminded of that remark attributed to Mark Twain about how a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on. (Actually, there’s no proof he ever said that, so maybe this is illustrative of my point.)

The increasing importance of social media and artificial intelligence makes this a particularly urgent issue, as these tools play a significant role in perpetuating untruths. Social media algorithms amplify repetition, and repetition drives the illusory truth effect. These algorithms also magnify saliency – they make things seem more significant than they are. These factors put a lot of responsibility on each of us individually to vet information.

This isn’t something for which any of us has the power to effect broad change. We need to focus on our own thinking patterns.  This means getting in the habit of questioning conventional wisdom. Because  a lot of conventional wisdom out there is complete nonsense.

So, when something is easy to believe, be suspicious. The fact that it’s easy doesn’t make it true.

Probability Isn’t Intelligence. 

If you’ve been to a marketing or market research conference recently, you’ll have noticed that most of the content is either expressly or indirectly about artificial intelligence and how it applies to our field. Same for the trade press – it’s heavily focused on AI.

As with pretty much every other profession, AI tools have significantly changed market research. From writing a first draft of a questionnaire to streamlining analysis, they can be extremely valuable. As a qualitative researcher, I’ve found them to be quite helpful in certain, specific situations. For instance, they’re great for automating repetitive tasks and are also very good (probably better than humans) at identifying latent themes in qualitative data.

As indispensable as these tools are, it’s important to remember what they can and can’t do. AI pioneers like Judea Pearl and Gary Marcus have pointed out that the term ‘AI’ is something of a misnomer, as artificial intelligence isn’t truly ‘intelligent’ in the most commonly understood senses of the word.

Rather, AI tools are high-dimensional probability calculators. They are good at yielding output that eerily resembles intelligence and are amazingly good at finding correlations and hidden patterns. As such, these tools can help us come up with new, unexpected hypotheses for further investigation.  However, it’s essential not to skip that ‘further investigation’ part.

Using technology to automate tedious, recurring tasks or to sift through a huge, disorganized dataset is a smart practice. But, if you let a microchip think for you, not only are you asking for something it can’t actually do, but you are making yourself – as a carbon-based life form – superfluous.

Drawing new insights from data requires thinking. Managing a conversation in a spontaneous manner that leads to unexpected, insightful findings requires thinking. For now, at least, people will need to continue to do these jobs. So, if we want to stay relevant as humans, we need to lean into some uniquely human skills: critical thinking, inference, and nonlinear reasoning. Remember, probability and insight are not the same thing. True wisdom comes from things like intuition and lived experience.

When it comes to AI, a lot of the conversation seems to focus on efficiency. I like saving time and money as much as the next guy, but truly transformative qualitative research isn’t about efficiency, it’s about inference and insight in the face of uncertainty. For now, at least, that’s what the human mind is for.

Do you really need that?   While conducting qualitative research on lightbulbs, a participant told me about her grandmother’s 98-year-old boyfriend, Chuck. He had recently bought replacement bulbs for his home and had paid a premium for ones that would last 15 years. While I admired Chuck’s optimism, I’m not sure that paying extra for bulbs that will almost certainly outlive you is a great idea for somebody on a fixed income.

Chuck is not unusual. We often seek more than we need. I was talking recently to a guy who has two cars. One is an SUV fully equipped for off-road driving, even though he admitted that has never taken the thing off-road and probably never will. The other is a Lamborghini that has a top speed of more than 150 MPH. For myself, I’ll share that I have a home theater system so powerful that, turned up to maximum volume, would flake the paint off the walls and damage my hearing.

Why do we do this? Several instincts drive this sort of behavior:

The safety margin instinct. Surplus capability feels like security (‘you never know!’)

Identity signaling. Excess capability is a way to say something about yourself. That guy with the SUV might like being able to drive offroad, even if he never does. And his Lambo signals something about virility and success, even if he never drives faster than 85.

The ‘more is more’ instinct. We often associate ‘more’ with ‘better,’ despite what Mies van der Rohe used to say. Over-the-top specifications feel meaningful, even if they go beyond practical requirements. This is linked to the fact that we evolved as a species under conditions of deprivation.

Fear of regret. It’s common to worry that, when making a purchase, if you don’t buy the top-of-the-line, you might regret it. You might miss out on capabilities that you turn out to need (again, ‘you never know!’).

The power of the quantifiable. That a car can go 150 MPH is a clear, numerical fact. The possibility of getting a speeding ticket is not readily quantified. Numbers feel objective and are easier to think about than squishy possibilities.

Sometimes investing in what seems to be overkill is smart. Sometimes it’s an indulgence. And sometimes it’s a misinterpretation of risk. The key to making good choices lies in thinking through such decisions with care. So, if you think you might be about acquire more than you need, ask yourself this:

“Am I buying this because I really need it, or because it represents how I would like to think about myself or how I want others to see me?”

Here’s a final thought. By now, you’ve probably already broken all your new year’s resolutions. So, as you’re thinking about the rest of the year, maybe a good goal would be to emphasize necessity over excess.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. A lot of arguments these days are about the meaning and usage of words. I’m increasingly dealing with this as a qualitative researcher. For one thing, the term ‘focus group’ gets used incorrectly all the time. But more importantly, understanding what research participants mean is tricky, as words are more emotionally loaded than they used to be. This makes my profession particularly valuable, as humans are very good (maybe better than robots) at parsing and understanding language.

Not only is language particularly fraught nowadays, a lot of terms are being bandied about thoughtlessly and indiscriminately.  Here are a few:

Fascism

Socialism

Genocide

Violence

I could go on, but you get the idea. These are important words. They refer to significant, real-world phenomena. When we use them incorrectly, attaching them to things they don’t accurately describe, we rob them of their meaning. When we call every unpleasant experience ‘trauma,’ the term loses the precision that makes it useful.

English has one of the largest vocabularies of any language – well over 100,000 words. There’s no reason to use the wrong word when the right one almost certainly exists.

I’ve heard people say that, while they know they are using a loaded word incorrectly, they’re doing it to ‘make a point.’ I get the sentiment. But we can make ourselves understood without, as Shakespeare might have said, ‘abusing the King’s English.’ You could argue that deliberately using a word incorrectly might be a subtle form of dishonesty. What’s more, when we incorrectly insert a term like ‘oppression’ or ‘gaslighting’ into a conversation, we make it more difficult to engage in thoughtful dialogue.

Part of what drives this is tribalism. Language informs our identity. We use codewords to signal affiliation and beliefs. In that sense, certain terms function less as descriptive language and more as badges. Using the ‘right’ word signals that you’re on the ‘correct’ side of an issue, even if the word itself is imprecise or inaccurate.

This seems like fodder for a New Year’s resolution. This year, I’m making a habit of questioning my use of language. I plan to research accepted definitions, understand etymological and historical origins, and be willing to change my usage based on what I learn. In fact, based on this process, I’ve already become much less eager to deploy the term ‘fascism.’

As my 8^th grade social studies teacher, Mr. Snyder, used to tell us, “if you don’t say what you mean, you won’t mean what you say.” We all can, and should, be more precise with the words we use.

Squabbling with the people we love.

One habit my profession of qualitative research has drilled into me is that of seeing things from another person’s perspective. I need to suspend my own assumptions to understand someone else’s POV. Guess what: this isn’t just a research thing. It’s an essential life skill, especially during the holidays.

When I was a kid, we celebrated holidays with a family with whom we were close. One feature of these gatherings was the father of this family and his oldest son getting into a bitter argument about something. They did this without fail. One noticeable thing about these disagreements was the betrayal each felt at the other not sharing his opinion. These two were very close. In fact, they still are. And they still fight like cats and dogs.

We tend to argue most loudly and angrily with the people to whom we are closest. That’s important to keep in mind as the holidays approach. We’re going to see a lot of family and close friends over the next few weeks. Wouldn’t it be nice to keep it friendly?

Why arguments with friends and family get so heated is an interesting question. It ties to our tribal nature as a species. We have evolved to have a strong group identity. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points out in his book The Righteous Mind, we highly value loyalty. This is why we see such things as patriotism, identification with an ideology or ethnicity, and self-sacrifice for the group as virtues.

Submission to authority is another evolved trait in our species. Those who are in a position of authority over a family or group instinctively expect members of the group to defer to their beliefs and opinions.

So, the innate need for family and friends to agree with us is rooted in evolutionary psychology. We want the people closest to us to agree with us. When they don’t, it can feel like a breach of trust. Remember this next week when a family member disagrees with your opinion on immigration or health insurance.

Perhaps there’s an opportunity for an early new year’s resolution here. I plan to find a kinder, gentler, more accepting way to interact with others during this holiday season. Whenever I encounter someone with whom I differ, I’m going to try to see things as they do.  Remember: the same instincts that cause family blow-ups are the ones we carry into our politics, workplaces, and communities. We treat disagreement as betrayal because, deep down, we expect people in ‘our group’ to see the world our way. So, we really are all family.