At TCC we specialise in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading.
Good morning and welcome to the TCC Weekly – an August publication in every sense of the word (as of tomorrow).
This week we cram Corbyn-mania into three bullet points, and have time left over to bring you a 6 step toolkit for containing a zombie invasion – plus a psychological reading of how you deal with workplace rudeness.
Speaking of which, that useless good-for-nothing Charlie once again inflicts on you the contents of his attic.
Behaviour Change ~ The psychology behind workplace rudeness plus where laughing comes from
Polls, Policies and Politics ~ Can MPs job share and Corbyn’s rainbow coalition
Health Hub ~ Epidemiology for Zombies
Values Lab ~ Are Labour voters driven by the esteem of others?
Charlie’s Attic ~ Take the rationality test and learn the language of scientology
Also, from now on, we’d like to invite our readers to contribute content. Email us a link you think worthy of the hallowed Weekly and if we haven’t seen it we’ll credit you for the good spot. You would be surprised by some of the esteemed readers we have (we were when we checked recently) so you never know where it might lead! We don’t spy on you – promise – but our most avid reader actually works in a British Embassy somewhere in the Balkans! Dobro Jutro to you!
Pssst – the guy at the adjacent desk’s putting his middle finger up at you… He isn’t really, but how you reacted to that might be a clue to how sensitive you are. Read this study on how we respond to workplace rudeness for more info.
Meanwhile, nudge approaches have also shown that being polite in texts to jobseekers can double their chances of turning up for interviews. This is just one of the sorts of behavioural psychology which politicians have sought in the aftermath of a crash which saw people (apparently) move from “zombies to misbehavers”.
Meanwhile, the NY Times report on the link between the impact social media has had on status anxiety and suicides. And, to give things a political dimension, Helen Lewis speculates on social media’s impact on Labour’s current “suicide vote”.
A Ukip donor this week has launched a site which looks like being central to the ‘Out’ campaign. The efforts to shake off the Little England tag are evident in the new global look to the ‘Coming Soon…’ home page!
And if the right can steal the left’s internationalist clothes then they can nick the pro-welfare parts of their wardrobe too – as going on in Scandinavia show.
Meanwhile this week, it’s official: 2015 was the first digital election and here are 7 ways of doing digital (note to Labour: spamming the living daylights out of your members is not the answer).
And speaking of Islington, if you’re surprised we’ve got to bullet-point 6 without mentioning the bearded one, then here is the lowdown (abbreviated to make way for the sheer quantity of content):
On a more serious note, this week also saw two reports, one by The Smith Institute into why Labour lost, and one by The Fabians into what happened in the key seats.
Hitherto laissez-faire party town Brighton has this week become the first place to make moves towards banning smoking outdoors, on Brighton beach.
In worrying news for the care sector, Italian research has found stressed nurses “dehumanise” their patients to deal with stress.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Studies offer Epidemiology for Zombies – a genuinely scientific 6 point plan for how to successfully quarantine and cordon off an invasion of the undead.
Jonathan Freedland and Helen Lewis both intimate this week that identity is a big part of Corbyn-mania – a craving to demonstrate ideological purity and (dare-they-say-it) a degree of narcissism.
We know that Labour members are around 70% Pioneer, but what is the values breakdown of those who identify with Labour (who are now, for a fee of £3, eligible to vote in the contest)? Could it be esteem-driven Prospectors who are tipping the balance Corbyn-wards?
Which political party do you, in your heart, most identify with?
Pioneer
Prospector
Settler
Labour
35%
43%
22%
Tory
30%
43%
27%
Green
64%
24%
13%
Lib Dems
53%
29%
18%
Ukip
20%
30%
50%
Well, perhaps… The above findings do seem to suggest Labour is more of a Prospector party than might be expected, with image perhaps more key than you’d think. But the table also shows the low levels of Prospectors in the Greens, the Lib Dems and Ukip – something which did nothing to stop the “Green Surge”, “Cleggmania” or the “Purple Peril” reverberating around social media.
Meanwhile, on the topic of public displays of politicisation, are you an introvert, an extrovert or an “ambivert”? Find out here.
And finally this week, climb the beanstalk to Charlie’s Attic, where you’ll find the goose that lays the golden egg…very occasionally:
Learn about the US mogul with a radical solution to the refugee crisis – and the German vigilante whose public notices are taking the immigration issue into their own hands.
Please click through onto our website for more details on what we do; the TCC website, and if you would like to take our values test too! Click here
