Shock at Donald Trump's victory is a symptom of our human behavioural blindness

But more surprising than electing a man to the highest office who once now famously snarled that the best way to treat women is to ‘grab em by the pussy’, is the fact that we are surprised at all by any of this.

Right now, the polling industry is officially in meltdown, exhausting itself working out how they got it so wrong.

But if you watched the news, or chatted to anyone before the results began filtering in, no one really imagined that he would win, including Donald Trump himself.

The echoes with Brexit here are blinding.

Shock has been the universal collective emotion experienced by all both the day after Brexit and also on the day Donald Trump got elected.

Shock and horror for some.

Shock and delight for others, but shock nonetheless.

And this shock belies a broader problem.

The problem is that we have stopped bothering to understand people.

A long time ago, we decided to stop applying our brains in the field of human behaviour. We decided it would be simpler if we just asked people and they told us.

If I ask consumer x why they do something they will tell me and I will therefore know what to do.

I’m afraid to say it doesn’t work like this.

In polling, in elections, in marketing or in just about any business that requires knowledge of the people you are trying to influence.

Human behaviour is more complicated.

Mostly we ourselves don’t even know why we behave in the way that we do.

I can’t tell you why I like a particular pair of shoes I own any more than you can tell me why one bit of packaging is more attractive to you than another.

And as Daniel Kahnemann said so eloquently:

“Consumers are not rational."

We are blind to our own behaviour.

I see a lot of this type of human behavioural blindness in marketing.

I watched a focus group for the first time in a long time last week.

(Every now and again I have to take a foray back into this world just to check that it really is a rubbish way of understanding people - it is by the way).

We had a bunch of the advertising people behind the mirror, who were less than complimentary about the mums and dads they were watching.

‘Urgh how appalling.”

“Ha what do they know!”

Well to be honest I don’t know what is more appalling now.

The fact that the new president of the free world is a man who wants ‘to build a wall’ or the fact that people who work in the very industries we pretend to cherish have such contempt for understanding people.

The idea that we can try and sell something or communicate with another group of individuals for whom we have no interest in or respect for is deeply troubling.

This is so often the case with advertising. If the ASA was right in 2012 when it said that 87% of all marketing goes unnoticed every year then this has to be the root of it all.

If any good can come of this absolute bloody mess perhaps it can be this.

For the love of god can we stop all talking to ourselves and violently agreeing with each other and write some ads which persuade actual people?

Real life doesn’t only happen in Zone 1 in London or in Williamsburg, New York and it doesn’t happen in a focus group.

Real life happens out there. So that’s where we need to be.

Tash Walker is founder of behavioural research agency The Mix