South Africans not quite glass half full people we perceive ourselves to be – Michael Charton

South Africans are people with a 'lekker' sense of humour. This can be seen in how we approach advertisements which reflect our sunny and humorous side and we have the ability to joke about serious matters. But are South Africans really people with a positive outlook? If you listen to conversations around the braai and comments on social media, it is clear that South Africans are presently exceptionally negative about the country and its future. And who can blame us as we grapple with electricity blackouts, economic growth that barely registers on a graph; rating agencies waiting to tell us that our economy is junk and people ready to blame it all on race. Michael Charton, the inventor of 'My Father's Coat' found this attitude reflected in a book that he found in London by Bobby Duffy about human misperception, which helped him to get a better idea of human bias and why humans are attracted to negative news. And the book dispels our perception of ourselves as funny people who can roll with the punches. Duffy said South Africans perceptions about reality were the worst out of 40 countries. He discusses this and a book that provides more insight into the American psyche with fellow bookworm Alec Hogg. – Linda van Tilburg.Michael Charton joins us now, The inventor of My Father's Coat. If you haven't seen his production of My Father's Coat – which I had the privilege of seeing in London – it really is an evening to remember. How many of those talks have you given?.___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Wow. And how do you keep enthused when you've done so many?.On the one hand it's not a story which is set in stone, so I keep trying to improve, try to find better balance and try to find ways to say things more efficiently. But when I'm up on stage, adrenaline takes over. It comes with a buzz of its own and I actually still enjoy telling the story..Well for the audience I can tell you from personal experience, it also feels like 10 minutes. It absolutely flies. But we're here to talk about books. When I asked a member of the Biznews community who we should be talking to, your name came up. I would imagine from your side that you do read history a lot – given that that's your passion – what book are you currently reading?.I was in London last week and I was recommended to go to Harrods – apparently it has a big bookstore – and I picked out a book called The Perils of Perception by Bobby Duffy. It's an interesting book. It's quite a short book about human misperception and it's a concept – not unrelated to history at all – which you'll remember from My Father's Coat, was the way I eventually got my head around the South African story. It was by layering the biases that people of South Africa have, often very negative. Until I'd gone that route, I really found it difficult to understand. So I've developed an interest in human biases and why humans think the way they do and what drives that. I've never really been able to articulate that, so this book I was hoping could close a few of those gaps and at least enable me to understand why we carry these biases and why sometimes they seem to stick with us. That was the reason why I picked it up and it's really interesting to see how humans have certain weaknesses which have – at times in our evolution – really helped us forward. In a modern world where information is so prevalent, this book really highlights how humans tend to be attracted to information which they really believed to be true, how we tend to look for the negative and how we instinctively become pessimistic about the information we're fed. He did 100,000 interviews, over 40 countries and asked people questions about politics, money and health – the things that we have day to day opinions on – and then he studied those variances between what statistics tell us the answers, and what humans in these populations and countries thought. Some fascinating insights came out of that..Was South Africa in there?.There were 40 countries – one of them was South Africa and the bad news is that we performed very badly and that our misperceptions were regarded as the worst out of all these 40 countries. Our opinions on things like teenage pregnancy, all the way through to inequality, our views were the furthest away from reality. Perhaps scarily along with that, we were also deeply pessimistic. Our views on things like crime were as far away from the truth as any other country. We are always thinking that it was worse than it is..Why?.I tried to work out exactly why each country would be different. It's not something I have clarity on yet, education wasn't a great correlation, but I suspect that South Africa – because of its troubled past – bring those elements of misperception that I mentioned, those tendencies towards bias are particularly heightened to look for the negative. One of the other elements is we tend to think in groups. So we looked at the majority of the people around us for those opinions – whether or not they are correct. From a financial perspective, the one example he gave was that people generally save less than they should for the future. One of the reasons why people are happy to do that, is that they believe – rightly or wrongly – that the people around them are also not saving. We instinctively believe that we are rational beings and we make decisions rationally, but what this book and what these surveys draw out is that the way we perceive information, is we look for emotional elements and we look for information that ties to a broad understanding of how we see the world..Lots of work to be done by those who communicate for a living. Maybe share another book, something that you've recently read that you would recommend..The book I got a huge amount out of last year was A History of the American people by Paul Johnson. Quite a conservative writer but he talks to the story of the United States. The opening paragraph is the story in the history of human kind, which has so many lessons to teach us – not necessarily from a positive perspective – but one quote that he uses is from Churchill who said (I might get this slightly wrong) "Americans always do the right thing but not before exhausting every alternative." So what we've got is this relatively blank canvas where Europeans moved across the United States with a small government – the British didn't really care for North America because it didn't have the easy cash crops like sugar or anything like that – so they let them do their own thing for a couple of hundred years and didn't worry too much about them. So you've got small governments, almost zero taxation and underlying this we see this huge growth emphasising how powerful humans are, we are able to collaborate freely and what kind of things we were able to produce when you have a smaller government opposed to a bigger one. It was a fascinating story and I just couldn't help but see our own story in theirs, in the different economies that arose. The diamonds and the gold. South Africa was very similar – socially and politically – to what happened in the American Deep South with their tobacco and cotton. I got stuck into this book and was fiercely passionate about each page. It's not an easy read – it is a long book, it's a big book – but if you've got a little bit of time and you want a story which gives you incredible human insights, I found this book to be unbelievably insightful..Michael have you read other Paul Johnson books?.I actually haven't. I've got a few on my shelf which I haven't got to. I do want to read more now..I'm a huge fan of his. From the Offshore islanders – which is the history of the British Isles which is very insightful – through to In search of God. He actually wrote a book where he scientifically had a look at whether or not there was a God. There've been many others, The history of the Jews which is also an amazing book but this one The history of the American people I must agree, I think it's probably his biggest book of the whole lot or the longest, but also where every page is fascinating. He somehow manages to pack so much into it and he's still alive. I was hoping to be able to interview him when I was in the UK but I think he's deep into his 90's and I didn't get the opportunity, but he's made a big contribution..To me, it's a very important read – probably should be balanced by other reads as well – but certainly each page seems to bring out a story which you really can feel the relevance of..Michael Charton, thank you very much for your contribution today.

South Africans not quite glass half full people we perceive ourselves to be – Michael Charton

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