The source has to be liked and trusted, or else the evidence will have very little coherence. As Kahneman puts it, “the basis of belief for most people is we believe people.” We believe people that we like and trust, and this is the basis of most of our beliefs. We don’t feel the same degree of belief with people we don’t like and trust, because it’s not emotionally and associatively compatible.
The mere threat of being on the outs with one’s tribe can be enough to make us avoid thinking independently and rationally about issues like peak oil and climate change.
Knowing that stories are fundamental to how we “think” and what we believe, it behooves us to consider their import on our dialogue, and how we convey our thoughts to others in different tribes, or who have different experiences. Storyteller Bill Harley offers some useful insights on this in his delightful TEDx lecture. “Stories are how we make sense of our lives, how we explain how we got where we are, how we imagine where we might go,” he says. “I think actually that story-making is at the very center of what it is to be human.”