Daniel Kahneman’s once wryly remark that ‘I believe in climate change, but I have no idea about it really. What I believe in is the institutions and methods of people who tell me there is climate change’ (Adams, 2021). His position is incredibly self-aware because it captures a fundamental truth about the human condition: what we believe follows trust long before it bows to data. In a boardroom, a [[A Crisp Document and Messy Meeting|meticulously crafted report]] can illuminate a problem for an audience that already respects the presenter; the same report will be dismissed when the presenter’s credibility is in doubt—or at odds with vested-interests. The ‘facts’ themselves are mute—they acquire persuasive power only through the character of the storyteller and the willingness of the listener to imbue the storyteller with credibility.
This isn’t a claim that facts are irrelevant; it is a reminder that facts rarely win a battle on their own. Studies continuously back this up by revealing that humans first choose a side, then marshal reasons to defend it. When the underlying relationship is fragile, even the most rigorous evidence can be twisted, ignored, or reframed to fit pre‑existing loyalties. And before you ask, the answer is yes—this is why you missed out on that last promotion, couldn’t get your project approved, were denied budget for a new role in your team, and had to restructure your department. For better or worse, your request lacked credibility.
While this is an organisational truth, it is a highly problematic one. Several decades of policies, procedures, and ever more nuanced governance was supposed to change organisations from being about “jobs for the boys” and approvals granted based on the whims of those with positional authority. Sadly, while the faces of those getting the nod have changed, the means tends to remain the same.
Why Reasons Follow Allegiances
Cognitive scientists have spent several decades demonstrating that human reasoning behaves more like a skilled press secretary than an impartial judge. Jonathan Haidt’s social‑intuitionist model famously described moral judgment as ‘the emotional dog and its rational tail’—we generate reasons after we have taken a stance, primarily to defend it and recruit allies (Haidt, 2001). If we push this a little further, the argument can be made that the primary evolutionary function of reason is social persuasion, not truth‑finding (Mercier & Sperber, 2017).
Work on ‘identity‑protective cognition’ sharpens the point. When a data table threatens a group identity, pure analytic ability does not help the person make their point; instead, it becomes a tool for what is termed motivated reasoning. In the ‘motivated numeracy’ experiments, respondents with stronger numeracy skills were better at misreading numbers when the politically congenial answer required it (Kahan et al., 2017; Kahan, 2017; Persson et al., 2021). In short, smart people arrive at opposite conclusions because they place trust in different sources.