Soap and social norms

Washing your hands with soap is a simple solution to a wide-ranging, complex, and potentially lethal problem.

So you'd be surprised at how long its taken to get the point in our culture where hand-washing is instinctive.

Because it turns out that soap has had a long history of being largely ignored by people who would benefit tremendously by it.

From obstetricians (faced with time-tested science) to third-world communities struggling to stay alive, many people throughout time and space have been as reluctant to adopt this simple life-changing habit as modern parents are to give their kids unbridled access to smartphones (or life-saving vaccines). 

The culprit? Culture. The idea that, to borrow a phrase from Seth, "people like us do things like this." That what makes people secure in their tribal identities is often just as much a product of who they think they are and what they and others like them do, as what they don't do or have never done before.

It's emotionally difficult to embrace a new habit if everyone you know is doing what they've always done. Even more so if it forces you to confront the possibility that you're wrong.

Changing your mind is a luxury that intelligent people from all walks of life have trouble embracing. And it's not because they are blind to the facts.

It's because many times-who we think we are and who we think we're not, what we (collectively) do and what we don't do-inform our reasoning to the extent that, we don't want to.

The lesson: If you want to stimulate change, don't rehearse the facts. Start with feelings, norms, and culture.

'How can we make it okay for people to feel like it's okay to try something new?"