“A Man Hears What He Wants To Hear & Disregards The Rest,” wrote Paul Simon for Simon and Garfunkle’s ‘The Boxer’. And he was right. Here, Leif Stromnes, managing director for strategy and growth at DDB Australia, explains what the difference between perception and reality means for us in adland.
On 28 October 2023, 81,000 people watched the Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and New Zealand at St Denis in Paris at the spectacular Stade de France stadium. A further 94 million watched the game live on televisions, tablets and mobile phone devices around the world.
Rugby is a sport that is passionately followed in both South Africa and New Zealand and audience data suggests that more than half of both nations’ populations watched the game that evening.
This is impressive when you consider that the Superbowl is watched by less than one third of Americans.
In the 28th minute of the game, New Zealand captain Sam Cane was adjudged to have tackled South Africa’s Jesse Kriel in an illegal and dangerous manner, and was red carded (sent off for the entire match), meaning New Zealand would have to compete for the next 52 minutes minus one player. For the record, South Africa went on the win the RWC final by one point.
In theory, all of the people who watched the match that evening should have seen the same version of reality; one where Sam Cane tackled Jesse Kriel dangerously and illegally. Yet what became immediately apparent was that South Africans and New Zealanders saw completely different versions of events.
On social commentary platform Reddit, New Zealanders immediately claimed that the tackle was only deserving of a yellow card (which would have meant that Sam Cane was free to re-join the game after 10 minutes), whereas South Africans were adamant that the sanction was correct and Sam Cane was fully deserving of the red card.
To complicate matters, South African captain Siya Kolisi was found guilty of a dangerous and illegal tackle in the second half and received a yellow card sanction. Now the Reddit comments were reversed. New Zealanders were adamant that it was deserving of a red card, and South Africans were wholly satisfied with the yellow.
It makes intuitive sense that in an emotionally charged group setting people will see what they want to see, but what is perhaps surprising and not common knowledge is that this is our default position when it comes to most of the decisions we make.
In an evolutionary twist, human brains have developed at an unnaturally rapid rate, and it turns out, our minds are not equipped to handle the cognitive rigours of the modern world.
For most of human history, people experienced very little information during their lifetimes and decisions tended to be survival based.
Now we are constantly receiving new information and we are forced to make numerous complex choices each day. To stave off mental overwhelm, we have a natural tendency to take shortcuts, and we instinctively give special weight to information that allows us to come to the conclusion we want to reach.
Like the South Africans and New Zealanders in the Rugby World Cup final, accepting information that confirms our beliefs is easy and requires little mental energy. Contradicting information causes us to shy away, grasping for a reason to discard it.
In a perverse, self-fulfilling confirmation loop, we are also likely to notice more evidence that supports our world view. This data is taken into memory, encoded and easily recalled.
Competing information is largely ignored, and when grudgingly acknowledged, treated with scepticism. Alarmingly, this remains our default position even when new evidence emerges that proves our strongly held position is wrong.
Contradictory evidence is unpalatable to our brains and holding different ideas is hard work, so we tend to focus on just one.
Advertising works in similar ways. Whilst it is rare for commercial communications to change minds and alter entrenched behaviours, it is very powerful at affirming beliefs and getting people to do more of the things they already do.
In the same way that people seek out information that supports current feelings, advertising that confirms existing behaviour is well received, fluently encoded into memory, and effortlessly retrieved when needed.
Rather than fighting evolution and instinct, the most effective advertising acknowledges the power of strongly held beliefs and looks to reinforce these in the name of the brand. Whilst facts might be objective, people are anything but. What we see are the things that confirm our beliefs.
When it comes to humans, what you see is all there is.
