What the family has always bought

In a supermarket in Yanbu, a woman reaches for the washing powder her mother always used. Beside it sits one that cleans better, costs less, and has the test results printed on the side. She has read them. She takes the familiar box anyway.

It is easy to call that irrational. I think it is something else. The familiar box says whose house she grew up in and what kind of household she runs. The other box offers only evidence, and evidence is a thin thing to hold up against belonging.

We like to imagine that people weigh the facts first and let custom fill in the gaps. Show the proof, and a reasonable person moves. It is a generous assumption: that if a claim can be tested, we will accept the result and change our minds.

Most of the time we will not, and not only in supermarkets. Clever people in every profession hold on to what their circle does long after the results have pointed somewhere else. Loyalty, standing and the comfort of doing what our own people do arrive before the analysis, and they usually win.

Which means the seller with the better product and the better data is often making the wrong argument. More proof rarely moves someone who is not standing where the proof is aimed.

Perhaps the order is the reverse of what we were taught. Culture is not a coat of paint on top of reason. It is the floor, and reason is what we build on it when the floor allows.