Unasked questions

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How many hours are spent annually trying to answer the question ‘Why do people drink Coke rather than Pepsi?’ My guess is that it runs into five figures. Added together, millions of hours must be spent each year in debating the minutiae of consumer choice – or in pursuing hair-splitting distinctions between competing brands. But there’s another category of questions that never gets asked because we assume we know the answer – and, often, we assume this because of the lazy use of the word ‘why?’

Interestingly, evolutionary biologists are very careful about questions that start with ‘why’, because they know they can be answered on different levels. ‘Why do we drink when we are thirsty?’ can be answered with anything from ‘because it’s enjoyable’ to ‘because organisms possessed of a drive to stay well hydrated enjoy a fitness advantage, enabling them to out-compete those that don’t’.

Biologist Ernst Mayr argued in 1961 that biology contains at least two fields – the proximate and the ultimate – which differ in their choice of, and approach to, research problems. On the one hand, he recognised functional biology, the practitioners of which “are vitally concerned with the operation and interaction of structural elements, from molecules up to organs and whole individuals. Their ever-repeated question is ‘how?’” Mayr contrasted this with the interests of the evolutionary biologist, whose “basic question is ‘why?’…To find the causes for the existing characteristics, and particularly adaptations, of organisms.”

A ‘how’ question can be satisfactorily answered at a proximate level: a ‘why’ question cannot. But, often, we treat ‘why X?’ as though it means, simply, ‘provide a single plausible explanation for X’. Once we’ve done that, we stop. Worse, if an explanation seems self-evident, we don’t even bother asking the question, for fear of looking daft. So queries are neglected because we think we know the answer – even though all we really know is one possible answer. 

‘Why do people go to the doctor?’ ‘Duh, because they’re ill and want to get better.’

‘Why do people hate standing on trains?’ ‘Duh, because it’s uncomfortable.’

‘Why do people give up smoking?’ ‘Duh, because it gives you cancer.’

I suspect all of those ‘duh’ answers are incomplete or largely wrong, but because they are plausible, obvious and make rational sense, we feel stupid asking corresponding questions.  

Asking childish ‘how’ questions may indeed be silly. ‘How are babies made?’, for instance. Asking childish ‘why’ questions can be priceless. 

Billions of pounds could be spent on improving NHS services, or on reducing railway overcrowding, without anyone seeking ultimate explanations for why people make GP appointments, or grumble about standing on trains. Yet, depending on what the ultimate – rather than the proximate – answer to these questions might be, the solutions to these problems could be very different.

For instance, I was fascinated to discover the success of a scheme to discourage unnecessary use of antibiotics. It seems that when patients suffering from viral illnesses are given post-dated prescriptions for antibiotics, they almost never use them – yet they go away from the doctor perfectly happy. By contrast, people refused antibiotics on the perfectly good grounds that they don’t work against viral infections feel cheated. This is the kind of placebo solution that will never emerge if you assume people are going to the doctor ‘to get better – duh!’

It is equally possible that, if we only knew the real ‘why’ of train overcrowding, we could design train interiors so passengers on shorter journeys stand voluntarily. Perhaps it is a simple question of balance – people seem perfectly happy to use those bum-rests on tube carriages, for instance.

American journalist H L Mencken once said that, for every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple and wrong. These lazy assumptions are far more costly to society than mistakes. Mistakes tend to be corrected – assumptions survive, unquestioned, for years. 

Rory Sutherland is vice-chairman, Ogilvy & Mather, UK