Here is the data. Show me the action!

“We have all the information on how bad air pollution is and how it causes a lot of health problems. Yet, where is the Action taken?” asked Maja Daruwala from the India Justice Report. It was the day 1 of Civic Sabha, a dialogue between various data for public good practitioners, organised by CivicDataLab.

I couldn’t wait to interact with her about her question. I read about GI JOE Fallacy. Knowing something is not sufficient to take action on it. I used to ask my therapist a lot of questions on neuroscience, hormones and how they affect my mood. I believed that knowing this information will make me behave better. But we all have friends who smoke despite knowing that tobacco is harmful. Knowing is not enough. Creating datasets is not enough. Ouch, existential crisis!

Knowing something only satisfies the logical part of our brains. The pre-frontal cortex (PFC). But decisions are made at the emotional part of the brain. The limbic system. You can act on what you know only if the knowledge influences you at the emotional level.

And it’s hard. The logical part and the emotional part of the brain seldom talk to each other. No amount of self-talking and rationalising would help because language also belongs to the logical part alone. That’s why self-help books hardly bring any change in you. You know more after reading them, but they don’t touch you emotionally. And you more or less remain same, but with more knowledge.

Then how can we influence people at an emotional level so that knowledge helps in making better decisions? My answer is Stories.

Stories influence you at an emotional level. They speak to the limbic system. They help you decide.

I told this theory of mine to Maja. She added a couple more points that I’m paraphrasing here:

1. Fear/Self-Interest: One way to influence people at emotional level is to appeal to their fears. Politicians will not act just because you show data. They will act if that data can bring in some activism that threatens politician’s position.
2. Delusion: Tell a powerful story that completely hijacks people’s brains. Consider the Israel-Gaza war. You’ll see fake news laden rhetorical narratives on both sides stirring people’s emotions and making them act, even against their own self-interest.

The problem is, people who are telling you these stories today are intentionally bypassing your PFC (logical part of the brain). No, I’m not talking about ‘mass’ movies. There is consensus between the story teller and audience that logics are bypassed for entertainment purposes. I’m talking about people who appeal to our fear and other worst instincts. They provide a road that bypasses PFC. And if you allow this, there are a numerous fake stories that can be told. You’d emotionally be charged up after listening to each of those stories and act the way they want you to.

But, we can also tell truthful stories. Stories that pass through the PFC. Real stories – that would bring in real impact.

I hope Maja was there on the final plenary on day 2. We had Gurman Bhatia and Shrayana Bhattacharya as speakers and they answered her question. They are using datasets to tell these truthful stories. Stories that translate data to action.

As Shrayana said towards the end, “Data can be emotional”