“All I’m doing is presenting the facts. If you don’t like them, you should probably think about why that is”.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve heard some version of the above more times than I can count, in multiple different contexts. Usually, the way it arises is Annie says something that Bobby doesn’t like, Bobby gets upset, and Annie claims she’s just stating the facts. The run-up to these kinds of statements usually has a few other common features, though. Almost always, Annie and Bobby were talking about something they initially disagreed on: it’s very rare to hear someone say something along the lines of what Annie said in a context where the person she’s talking with agrees with her general position. Furthermore, at least one of Annie or Bobby is usually trying to change the other person’s mind or at least show the other person they’re wrong about the topic in question. Finally, in my experience at least, Annie generally doesn’t succeed – and neither, for that matter, does Bobby.

This raises a few questions for me. First, why do claims about merely stating facts tend to only get trotted out during fraught conversations where there is broad disagreement? Why do people rarely have to state that “all I’m doing is presenting the facts” when discussing the atomic number of carbon as opposed to the merits of various childcare options? And why does the presentation of the “facts” that are clearly persuasive to Annie so rarely persuade Bobby?

There are a few options. One is that Annie’s facts are wrong – either because she made a mistake, or because she is deliberately lying, or perhaps somewhere between the two. Another option is that Bobby is just stupid – he is unable to consider the facts that Annie did, and draw the same obvious, reliable conclusion. There is a third option though. This is the possibility that mere facts, on their own, are not enough to see the truth. In other words, we human beings are not mere input-output machines, who take in the same set of facts and use them to arrive at the same set of conclusions. There is something else going on – something we need over and above the cold hard facts, in order to arrive at the truth. What is that?

There is a wide literature on how we draw conclusions from the evidence available to us, which can’t be summarised in one blog post. However, one interesting paper from 2011 provides a good primer on the topic. From the abstract:

“Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade…Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views.”

The paper provides a fascinating tour of the biases that everyone – yes, everyone! – exhibits when reasoning (or arguing) about a particular subject. The idea is that if we assume the point of reasoning is to arrive at the truth, then reasoning does a poor job – we make all sorts of errors, and poor decisions, and we base our actions not according to the best reading of the facts available, but rather on the conclusion that’s easiest to justify. On the other hand, if we assume the point of reasoning is not to arrive at the truth, but rather to persuade people that we’re right – including when we’re actually wrong! – then reasoning works perfectly.

There’s a very troubling implication to the research above, which some of you may have spotted. If we want to persuade people that we are right, then we can’t rely on facts! People’s reasoning is not designed to travel in a straight line from facts to truth. It’s arose for a different purpose. Therefore, if we want to persuade people that we’re right, there’s no point simply presenting facts in a way that conflicts with their natural human psychology. We have to present facts in a way that they can combine with their psychology to ultimately change their minds.

In practice, people often do the opposite. They present the facts, without trying to make them persuasive, and if the other person is not persuaded, then both people tend to default to the alternative explanations I provided above. They might start claiming the other person is mistaken in their facts, or they may accuse the other person of being less than truthful, or they may assume that the other person is just stupid and can’t understand basic logic. Rarely do they instead consider that the facts are not being presented in the correct way, taking account for the realities of our psychology. Rarely do they think that perhaps they should not seek to merely inform, but rather to persuade.

I find people can feel uncomfortable with this approach, for two broad reasons. The first is that people can feel it is dishonest or manipulative to not just present facts, but to present them in a way that’s most likely to be persuasive. The second reason is that often people think it is wrong to provide facts in (what they perceive to be as) a watered down, covert, apologetic manner. Instead, they think they should simply present the truth, with a clear conscience, and people can take it or leave it.

I would answer both these objections in the same way: you need to ask yourself what the point of your conversation is. If the point of your conversation is to simply lay out facts, then sure, that’s all you should do. Proclaim the bare facts, and your job is done. Who cares if the other person doesn’t accept or believe them, because that was never your goal in the first place

If, on the other hand, the point of your conversation is to try to bring someone to believe the truth, then presenting the facts is not enough – and sometimes can make things worse! This is not your fault, but nor is it the other person’s fault – it’s simply a basic consequence of our psychology. However, it’s a consequence we have to acknowledge and deal with. If we refuse to do so, and instead claim that we presented the facts, and it’s not our fault if the other person didn’t arrive at the truth, we’re making about as much sense as a parent claiming that they left their toddler in the kitchen with the fridge door open and it’s not their fault that she didn’t prepare a suitable dinner for herself. Toddlers need more than access to raw ingredients to eat a suitable dinner – and humans need more than access to raw facts to arrive at the truth.

So, if our goal is to present the truth, rather than bare facts, what do we need to do? Great question! We’ll be following up with some posts on specific biases that people exhibit, and how to skillfully recognise and navigate these biases in ourselves and others. In the meantime, we have a lot of blog posts on how to make a conversation persuasive – check out our Having Better Conversations tag to see what we’ve written on the topic to date! And if you find you’re regularly tripping up in a particular conversation or on a particular topic, please do email us and let us know – we’d love to help you out!

Muireann