Factfulness — F5 to your worldview
Hans Rosling’s life’s work on global health encourages gratitude and critical thinking.
“If you haven’t understood the present, how can you possible guess the future?”
— Gapminder Foundation
Mindfulness has taught the increasingly distracted Western population to stay in the present. Factfulness guides us to ground our viewpoints on something more than our personal perspective —the modern truth, data.
Factfulness is a dramatically engaging read. It explores a life’s worth of adventures, experiences, and wisdom from Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Sadly, Rosling died before finishing the book. His son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund have finished it, continuing Hans’s life’s work.
Factfulness is a monumental work that compares to Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, or The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. The book is based on deep dedication on global health and it is well-referenced. Yet, there are some perspectives the reader serves to bear in mind.
Revealing our biases
In all low-income countries across the world today, how many girls finish primary school?
A: 20 percent
B: 40 percent
C: 60 percent
This is the first item on a thirteen-item questionnaire Rosling has toured the world with. The questionnaire taps into people’s perspectives on global health, education, and well-being, and it has gathered thousands of answers all around the world.
The answers reveal our thoughts and beliefs regarding the topics are consistently biased. Most people regardless of their education or profession do worse than they would if they answered it randomly. How interesting! Actually, the book is as much about global health as it is about people’s perceptions on them.
(By the way, the correct answer is C — and you most likely underestimated the number.)
Ten dramatic instincts
Using the term “bias” to describe the nature of human information processing is somewhat flawed. Humans are not rational machines but rather easily influenced often without them noticing it. Wisely, Rosling reframes this conversation by using the term “instinct”.
Factfulness presents ten key dramatic instincts that affect our thinking, and guide us to adopt and maintain a factually incorrect view of the world.
- Gap: We tend to polarize between two groups which makes them seem more different than they actually are.
- Negativity: Humans are tuned to negative news — positive news receive significantly less attention.
- Straight lines: People expect things to continue as they have. They are less likely to expect increase or decrease in the pace in change.
- Size: Anything can appear large or small without relevant points of comparison that also consider change through time.
- Fear: We are particularly attuned to identifying threats and reacting to them which blinds us to the bigger picture.
- Generalization: Our tendency to categorize people and things makes them appear more similar than they actually are.
- Destiny: We assume significant factors in life don’t change and fail to see the gradual, slow change as we maintain our expectations.
- Single tool: The tools we have at our disposal limit our understanding: we should always strive to find several perspectives and test our ideas.
- Blame: Finding someone to blame blinds us to the fact that there are often numerous factors that contribute to the situation, including ourselves.
- Urgency: Many parties usher a sense of urgency which may lead us to act before we consider the best course of action.
The book presents the reader with several techniques to overcome the influence of the ten dramatic instincts. The guidelines given encourages us to evaluate news, politics, design, and discussions critically. This is indeed sorely needed in the time where hidden agendas drive discussions globally.
However, the authors remind us that often the most considerable threats come from well-intentioned people. Our thinking may be based on outdated information, our perspective may be limited, and moreover, we may be blind to our own misconceptions. Therefore, the change must start with each and every one of us.
Which facts to choose?
The reader should acknowledge the aim of the book: to get people interested in global health, facts, and critical thinking.
However, the title could be somewhat more self-aware. It believes in facts but could discuss the fundamental issue of measuring the right things. As much as our biases, numbers are also a compelling way to get people’s attention. Often, the person choosing the indicator holds much power in creating change.
The numbers chosen by Rosling reflect a humanistic, empathetic worldview which I fully endorse. At the same time, this perspective pays less attention to the well-being of environment and animals, technological development, economic progress, and the importance of culture. This could have been highlighted more.
The questionnaire addressed throughout the book is neither without problems. It seems the items are carefully chosen to illustrate our mistaken beliefs. The questionnaire should be perceived as a rhetorical tool rather than psychological measurement. I would have loved to explore what, if any, themes people generally get right. Yet, as Rosling argues — only drama makes the news. Having your facts right is no news to anyone.
Balanced thinking
One of my greatest insights comes from studying dialectic behavior therapy by Marsha Linehan. She argues we should perceive and examine the world through polarities that complement each other. For instance, a person can be good just as they are, and still need to change their behavior.
Rosling presents the same dichotomy in an engaging way framing it in terms of global health: The world is constantly getting better and there are still great challenges left to tackle. We could pay more attention to things that are well and be proud of our global accomplishment — and remain humble in the face of challenges left to solve.
We should not take this as turning a blind eye to the challenges. For instance, early this year the results of a large poverty-related questionnaire were published. Looking at the averages, Finnish people are globally considered well-off, well-educated, safe, and happy. At the same time, there is a significant minority who fight depression due to limited resources. These two worlds exist at the same time.
What Rosling pays less attention to is there may be a reason for our focus on the negative. It may encourage us to fight poverty, disease, and inequality throughout the world. It may be that our “dramatic instincts” serve an evolutionary purpose that motivate us to create a better world.
Dialectically considered, we should keep our drive for improvement— while being grateful for the world the previous generations have created.
One part of a series
Factfulness should also be considered in terms of Gapminder foundation, a non-profit self-proclaimed “fact tank” dedicated to developing a fact-based worldview. Founded by the same people, the book presents the Gapminder perspective in a book format.
Gapminder provides a wealth of interactive and multimedia materials on global health on their website (links below). They include TED talks, interactive tools to explore global health data, and the Dollar Street that shows in pictures how people live around the world through
To further their cause, the materials are meant to be shared, and also this review is kindly supported by their free materials.
Global health has never been this interesting
Our instincts are central to the book, but the book is not about them. It is about skills in critical thinking, and refreshing our perceptions on global issues. The book is deeply value-based, and proposes us to act on actual, researched understanding, not guesses.
“This is a book about the world and how it really is. It is also a book about you, and why you (almost everyone I have ever met) do not see the world as it really is. It is about what you can do about it, and how this will make you feel more positive, less stressed, and more hopeful.” — Rosling, Factfulness
Factfulness is also the newest, considerable addition to the wonderful world of applied psychology. It does the same for global health that Daniel Kahneman did for economics by introducing it with behavioral economics, and Don Norman to design by advocating user-centered design.
Factfulness is an engaging read. It makes you curious on global health and development, invites you to update your worldview, and improves your skills in thinking critically.
Did you learn something? Please clap and share!
Lauri Lukka is a Helsinki-based psychologist, service designer, and podcaster working with user-centered design.
He has previously written on taming complexity through design, how to be yourself at work, and on the importance of giving feedback.
References and readings
Gapminder Foundation. Cognitive bias codex, Misha Chellam. Dialectic Behavioral Therapy. Free images from www.gapminder.org. Island by Fabio Jock, Unsplash.
