People First. Facts Second. What We Learned in 2025.
It is foolish and short-sighted for me to think that everyone likes me, let alone trusts what I have to say. There are likely people reading this column right now who fit that description.
On the one hand, this bums me out, because I strive to be an all-around good guy. Do right by my family and friends. Be the best colleague I can be to the people I work with every day. Try to be the calmest, clearest-thinking person in the room, as my old man would say.
On the other hand, the bottom line is that I’m human and you are human. There are people we are drawn to and people we are not. So why would I – or you – listen to people we don’t like, even if the person we don’t like is saying something completely accurate and believable?
The answer, my friends, is the No. 1 thing we’ve learned in 2025. People first. Facts second.
We Don’t Trust the Same People, so We Don’t See the Same Story.
Daniel Kahneman is a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics. He and his collaborator, Vernon Jones, won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics by challenging the idea in economic theory that humans behave rationally in decision-making. (Spoiler alert. We don’t.).
Earlier this year, I listened to a great podcast exchange between Kahneman and Shane Parrish.
To paraphrase their discussion, people don’t change their minds because we give them better facts. They change their minds when they trust us first.
We don’t examine evidence and reach conclusions. We trust people we like, then adopt their views, according to Kahneman. Want to change someone’s mind? Facts won’t do it. They need to trust you first. If they admire you, they’ll find reasons to agree. If they dislike you, the best evidence won’t matter.
Smart people believe opposite things because they trust different people. “If they are wrong, we’re wrong and we can’t handle that,” says Shane Parrish.
Here’s a doozy of an example.
In the 1950s a group of human behavior researchers joined The Seekers, an actual doomsday cult. These researchers set out to learn why people 1) join a freaking cult and 2) stay in the cult even when the story they are told is proven factually false. Check it out in more detail here.
The Seekers were led by Dorothy Martin, who claimed to communicate with aliens called the Guardians. The Guardians warned Dorothy of the earth’s imminent demise by flood on Dec. 21, 1954. The Guardians, though, would come to earth and save Dorothy and the Seekers first.
The Seekers went to the media to warn humanity.
Obviously Dec. 21, 1954, came and went. No Guardians. No flood. No demise of humanity. Members of the Seekers changed their story to say that the aliens must have seen their devotion to Earth and showed mercy on the human race.
The Seekers didn’t change their point of view once they woke up Dec. 22, 1954. Instead, they locked into that new story of devotion, went out and told even more media about being saved.
Yep, this is an extreme example, but it illustrates that these folks trusted each other and Dorothy first, then their version of the facts came later. Then when those “facts” were disproven, i.e. the world wasn’t destroyed in a flood, the Seekers stayed true to each other and produced another explanation. They didn’t leave the group. In fact, they doubled down on the people they liked and trusted in the face of obviously wrong information.
The Same Facts with Much Different Interpretations
The next example is not a cult and closer to home.
2025 was the 20th anniversary of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana and Mississippi. The lives of the millions of people and families on the Gulf Coast were permanently altered in the aftermath of these storms, mine included.
I tended to stay away from a lot of the various retrospectives about these anniversaries. But what I did see were families and individuals who went through the exact same thing as my wife and I did. The facts were nearly the same. Same storm. Same city. Same fights with insurance companies. Same uncertainty. Same new places to live in the end.
However, the experiences and perceptions were very much different. Individuals with completely different views of how their lives had gone over 20 years and why. They were living in newer, more modern homes, just like me. They grew in the jobs they had, just like me. They had families, just like me. But a lot of these folks expressed desires to go back to the days before August and September 2005. They wanted the life that they had, as opposed to the one they have. Why?
Because of the communities where these citizens were before their lives were changed and the communities they moved forward in their lives with.
Trust remains the strongest the closer we are to our own home. If the people we trust the most are experiencing certain things, that informs us of what we believe and the impressions we have of the world beyond our own home.
People first. Facts second.
What We Think vs. What Is.
The perception we have of something is frequently not what it actually is.
Check out my favorite chart of 2025. This is a 2022 poll of 1,000 U.S. adults from YouGov. Some highlights:
One percent of Americans have a household income of more than $500,000, but we think 26% of us have this much household cash.
On a related note, we think 62% of Americans have a household income greater than $50,000. In reality, 50% of Americans actually do.
Americans believe that 21% of the population is transgender. That number is closer to 1%.
How many left handers do Americans think are out there? 34% How many of us actually are there? 11%
We think 88% of us have flown on an airplane, but 59% actually have.
Look a smidge deeper and we see people looking at their lives and the lives of the people around them and developing the perceptions of what they think vs. what is. If you fly on an airplane now and again and the people in your circle do too, then you are more likely to think 88% of us have flown.
We make policy decisions based on what we think different areas of society make in a given year, when the facts bear out a much different story. There is such a disparity in that $500,000 household income number, because we think we know what our friends and neighbors pay for their car or their kids’ tuition. We know what we paid for our house, which is next to their house. A significant number of us also see ourselves eventually earning that kind of scratch, because as a population in the Gulf South, we are consistently optimistic that next year will be better than this year.
People will not change their minds because we give them better facts. They change their minds when they trust us.
For communicators and institutions, we must be a voice that our target audiences can believe in, and we must show up (preferably in person) and tell our own story.
Right before Thanksgiving I saw this from Bruce Mehlman’s Age of Disruption, a weekly set of thought-provoking charts and I love charts:
“Yet, trust is a funny thing,” says Mehlman. “People hate Congress but trust their own Congressperson. They don’t trust big business but trust their own employer most. We don’t trust the ‘mass media’ but trust the podcasters we listen to and Substacks we read. We have confidence in our own doctor but despise the ‘healthcare system.’ Why? It’s based on how we engage them. We don’t trust those things we perceive from afar, through the lens of a media incentivized to keep us reading, watching and listening via drama and outrage…By contrast we trust those things we experience in real life, firsthand, offline.”
Listen for the story behind someone’s belief. Earning someone’s belief doesn’t come from volume. It comes from connection.
In the 2025 Gulf South Index, Family, hard work and money were all ranked as “very important” by more than 90% of our respondents. At the same time, patriotism, religion and community are all on the rise as personal priorities.
Other than money, each one of these values/characteristics has a common thread joining them…CONNECTION. Connection to our family, our co-workers, our congregation, our country.
“If people behave in strange ways, look at the situation they’re in and what are the pressures in the situation that make them act that way.” – Daniel Kahneman
If people believe you, they will find reasons to agree with you and your cause. If they dislike you, the best evidence won’t matter. This is especially the case when it comes to trying to create positive change. It may be positive change to me, but the other person 1) doesn’t believe you and 2) thinks that you will hurt their situation, not help it. And one final quote from Dr. Kahneman:
“You can really expect potential losers to fight a lot harder than potential winners.”
Reaching the Gulf South isn’t about being louder. It’s about being clearer. More human. More grounded in what matters to our most important audiences.
People first. Facts second.
Here we are. Six years of the Gulf South Index. We just wanted to share things that are interesting to us and we hope that some of them are interesting to you.
Special thanks to Katie Grace Walshe, Jennifer Crockett and Traci Howerton for keeping this idea moving along. Thanks to our partners as well – Bill Skelly and the whole Causeway Solutions data and analysis team.
Merry Christmas, y’all. See you in 2026 with this thought:
“The past wasn’t as good as you remember. The present isn’t as bad as you think. The future will be better than you anticipate.” – Morgan Housel
It is foolish and short-sighted for me to think that everyone likes me, let alone trusts what I have to say. There are likely people reading this column right now who fit that description.
On the one hand, this bums me out, because I strive to be an all-around good guy. Do right by my family and friends. Be the best colleague I can be to the people I work with every day. Try to be the calmest, clearest-thinking person in the room, as my old man would say.
On the other hand, the bottom line is that I’m human and you are human. There are people we are drawn to and people we are not. So why would I – or you – listen to people we don’t like, even if the person we don’t like is saying something completely accurate and believable?
The answer, my friends, is the No. 1 thing we’ve learned in 2025. People first. Facts second.
We Don’t Trust the Same People, so We Don’t See the Same Story.
Daniel Kahneman is a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics. He and his collaborator, Vernon Jones, won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics by challenging the idea in economic theory that humans behave rationally in decision-making. (Spoiler alert. We don’t.).
Earlier this year, I listened to a great podcast exchange between Kahneman and Shane Parrish.
To paraphrase their discussion, people don’t change their minds because we give them better facts. They change their minds when they trust us first.
We don’t examine evidence and reach conclusions. We trust people we like, then adopt their views, according to Kahneman. Want to change someone’s mind? Facts won’t do it. They need to trust you first. If they admire you, they’ll find reasons to agree. If they dislike you, the best evidence won’t matter.
Smart people believe opposite things because they trust different people. “If they are wrong, we’re wrong and we can’t handle that,” says Shane Parrish.
Here’s a doozy of an example.
In the 1950s a group of human behavior researchers joined The Seekers, an actual doomsday cult. These researchers set out to learn why people 1) join a freaking cult and 2) stay in the cult even when the story they are told is proven factually false. Check it out in more detail here.
The Seekers were led by Dorothy Martin, who claimed to communicate with aliens called the Guardians. The Guardians warned Dorothy of the earth’s imminent demise by flood on Dec. 21, 1954. The Guardians, though, would come to earth and save Dorothy and the Seekers first.
The Seekers went to the media to warn humanity.
Obviously Dec. 21, 1954, came and went. No Guardians. No flood. No demise of humanity. Members of the Seekers changed their story to say that the aliens must have seen their devotion to Earth and showed mercy on the human race.
The Seekers didn’t change their point of view once they woke up Dec. 22, 1954. Instead, they locked into that new story of devotion, went out and told even more media about being saved.
Yep, this is an extreme example, but it illustrates that these folks trusted each other and Dorothy first, then their version of the facts came later. Then when those “facts” were disproven, i.e. the world wasn’t destroyed in a flood, the Seekers stayed true to each other and produced another explanation. They didn’t leave the group. In fact, they doubled down on the people they liked and trusted in the face of obviously wrong information.
The Same Facts with Much Different Interpretations
The next example is not a cult and closer to home.
2025 was the 20th anniversary of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana and Mississippi. The lives of the millions of people and families on the Gulf Coast were permanently altered in the aftermath of these storms, mine included.
I tended to stay away from a lot of the various retrospectives about these anniversaries. But what I did see were families and individuals who went through the exact same thing as my wife and I did. The facts were nearly the same. Same storm. Same city. Same fights with insurance companies. Same uncertainty. Same new places to live in the end.
However, the experiences and perceptions were very much different. Individuals with completely different views of how their lives had gone over 20 years and why. They were living in newer, more modern homes, just like me. They grew in the jobs they had, just like me. They had families, just like me. But a lot of these folks expressed desires to go back to the days before August and September 2005. They wanted the life that they had, as opposed to the one they have. Why?
Because of the communities where these citizens were before their lives were changed and the communities they moved forward in their lives with.
Trust remains the strongest the closer we are to our own home. If the people we trust the most are experiencing certain things, that informs us of what we believe and the impressions we have of the world beyond our own home.
People first. Facts second.
What We Think vs. What Is.
The perception we have of something is frequently not what it actually is.
Check out my favorite chart of 2025. This is a 2022 poll of 1,000 U.S. adults from YouGov. Some highlights:
Look a smidge deeper and we see people looking at their lives and the lives of the people around them and developing the perceptions of what they think vs. what is. If you fly on an airplane now and again and the people in your circle do too, then you are more likely to think 88% of us have flown.
We make policy decisions based on what we think different areas of society make in a given year, when the facts bear out a much different story. There is such a disparity in that $500,000 household income number, because we think we know what our friends and neighbors pay for their car or their kids’ tuition. We know what we paid for our house, which is next to their house. A significant number of us also see ourselves eventually earning that kind of scratch, because as a population in the Gulf South, we are consistently optimistic that next year will be better than this year.
People will not change their minds because we give them better facts. They change their minds when they trust us.
For communicators and institutions, we must be a voice that our target audiences can believe in, and we must show up (preferably in person) and tell our own story.
Right before Thanksgiving I saw this from Bruce Mehlman’s Age of Disruption, a weekly set of thought-provoking charts and I love charts:
“Yet, trust is a funny thing,” says Mehlman. “People hate Congress but trust their own Congressperson. They don’t trust big business but trust their own employer most. We don’t trust the ‘mass media’ but trust the podcasters we listen to and Substacks we read. We have confidence in our own doctor but despise the ‘healthcare system.’ Why? It’s based on how we engage them. We don’t trust those things we perceive from afar, through the lens of a media incentivized to keep us reading, watching and listening via drama and outrage…By contrast we trust those things we experience in real life, firsthand, offline.”
Listen for the story behind someone’s belief. Earning someone’s belief doesn’t come from volume. It comes from connection.
In the 2025 Gulf South Index, Family, hard work and money were all ranked as “very important” by more than 90% of our respondents. At the same time, patriotism, religion and community are all on the rise as personal priorities.
Other than money, each one of these values/characteristics has a common thread joining them…CONNECTION. Connection to our family, our co-workers, our congregation, our country.
“If people behave in strange ways, look at the situation they’re in and what are the pressures in the situation that make them act that way.” – Daniel Kahneman
If people believe you, they will find reasons to agree with you and your cause. If they dislike you, the best evidence won’t matter. This is especially the case when it comes to trying to create positive change. It may be positive change to me, but the other person 1) doesn’t believe you and 2) thinks that you will hurt their situation, not help it. And one final quote from Dr. Kahneman:
“You can really expect potential losers to fight a lot harder than potential winners.”
Reaching the Gulf South isn’t about being louder. It’s about being clearer. More human. More grounded in what matters to our most important audiences.
People first. Facts second.
Here we are. Six years of the Gulf South Index. We just wanted to share things that are interesting to us and we hope that some of them are interesting to you.
Special thanks to Katie Grace Walshe, Jennifer Crockett and Traci Howerton for keeping this idea moving along. Thanks to our partners as well – Bill Skelly and the whole Causeway Solutions data and analysis team.
Merry Christmas, y’all. See you in 2026 with this thought:
“The past wasn’t as good as you remember. The present isn’t as bad as you think. The future will be better than you anticipate.” – Morgan Housel
Marc Ehrhardt
President
The Ehrhardt Group