The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know pure evil from their pure EVEL.
This week we look at the tricks for tackling poor cohesion, at the places where jobs are most at risk from robots, and at the Values profile of those who aren’t afraid of hard graft.
And of course, there’s the Friday booth for the workshy that is Charlie’s Attic, this week including the world’s oldest animal.
With the alt-right apparently unified by online platforms, and the concept of national narcissism again coming up, the interesting question of how you create cohesion can now be considered a behaviour change in its own right. Matthew Goodwin points out that cultural concerns are much deeper than economic ones (study here), hence the traditional progressive argument that deprivation is the big factor doesn’t quite hold up. So, what’s the answer, if you want to stop the sorts of behaviours that damage cohesion?
Our own work, using the Origins tool developed by our partners Webber-Phillips, has consistently found that places with low historic diversity but high recent migration are the most consistently anti-migrant. And when diversity becomes a shared norm people stop noticing it. In other words, while people don’t necessarily notice difference after a while, they’re highly sensitive to change when it's visible or unexpected. Under these circumstances, the best approach for councils and others is often to emphasise continuity and the things residents share.
Where will the robots take over?
This great map, which you can view in more detail by clicking here, shows the parts of the UK most vulnerable to job losses thanks to automation. Hayes and Harlington, the Shadow Chancellor’s seat, is interestingly most at risk, with areas like Edinburgh South the least at vulnerable.
Skills are of course, central to this, and the map draws attention to something that’s a bit of a sleeper issue – frequently overshadowed by de-industrialisation to cheaper countries – but which the politicians of the future will surely have to grapple with before long. As Sunderland MP Bridget Phillipson puts it: “Free trade and automation means the sorts of work that once employed miners, dockers, millworkers and shipbuilders…haven’t just moved to China, Malaysia or wherever, they’ve also moved from people to machines.”
The Values Lab is based on the Values Modes segmentation tool – created by Cultural Dynamics and used by TCC– which divides the population into ethics-driven Pioneers, aspirational Prospectors, and threat-wary Settlers. Take the test here to see which you are.
The value(s) of hard work
Former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was this week filmed making a speech for young Salford City players about the value of hard work. The five minute video was rousing enough to provoke a full Times article praising Fergie’s love of graft. We thought we’d roll up our lab coat sleeves and put a good dollop of elbow grease into the petri dish this week, by finding out which values groups are most likely to share Sir Alex’s outlook.
% who agree that
Pioneers
Prospectors
Settlers
“To me, achieving a better position in life is worth a lot of effort. At work, titles and grades are important to show how well I’m doing compared to others.”
10%
24%
10%
“In most situations, I believe there’s no point in putting in more effort than you have to. If something is working for me, I don’t tend to mess with it.”
14%
19%
26%
The two statements, which are the most explicitly effort-based ones that we could find, tell an interesting story. The first is about appreciating recognition for work, whereas the second is about not putting in more exertion than you have to. Interestingly, Prospectors are far and away the most likely to agree with the first, pro-work statement, which initially makes you think they’re the most likely to share the Ferguson doctrine. But they’re also much more likely Pioneers to agree with the second, anti-work statement. Strange.
This shows that, rather than being true grafters in the Manchester Utd mould, Prospectors are pragmatists: happy to put in so they can get out, but unwilling to put in more toil than they have to.
And finally this week, the marathon of fruitless endeavour that is Charlie’s Attic:
Watch this animation on where the English language comes from
