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 their Executive Orders from their Classified Presidential Directives.
This week, despite that unpromising opener, we become the ‘home of witty banter’ for the world of socio-psychology. Our Behaviour Change section includes the brain science behind sick jokes, and our PPP section explores comedy and the political left. Plus, with the delicious irony of Trump’s relative marching against him, we look at extended family through the prism of Values Modes.
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the nudge industry equivalent of a Krusty the clown, which this week includes Underground singalongs and fish gags.
‘Dave’ Evans
Director
If you see a link that belongs in The Weekly then just email it to us and we’ll accredit you for the good spot and give you a free TCC exclamation mark to say thanks. Meanwhile, if you’re interested to see the mad, marvellous and missable articles featured in recent weeks then just click here for the full back catalogue of TCC Weeklies.
‘Psychology of sick jokes’
If sarcasm’s the lowest form of wit, then where do ‘sick jokes’ come in? Surely laughing at terrorist attacks or natural disasters puts you at the bottom of the pile?
Not necessarily so, according to psychologists at the University of Vienna. According to their research, appreciation of dark or ‘sick’ comedy is actually a sign of high IQ. But the really surprising part of the research is that it also correlates with good moods – with cheerier people enjoying black humour more. So ‘sick’ joke fans are clever but happy…
This is an interesting finding about the human mind. One explanation might be that sick joke enthusiasts are clever enough to appreciate the subversive nature of the joke, but at the same time happy in their own lives through being insulated from the world’s real problem.
Sticking on the theme of humour, Danielle Grufferty describes this week the luke warm reception received from the left by her @CorbynSuperFan spoof twitter account. Grufferty’s foppish protagonist, a self-proclaimed “poet and online blogger” recently posted this marvellously rubbish ode to Paul Mason (picture from original source).
The concept of the left and comedy is an interesting – and serious – topic. The journalist Sarah Sands wrote a little while back that “life is either a comedy or an outrage” depending on whether you’re on the right or the left. Perhaps part of the left’s stems from not being sure what it stands for during the good times…
Also this week:
Daniel Pink gives five books to read if you’re a liberal and five if you’re a conservative
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.
‘Values and extended family’
It was recently revealed that a member of Donald Trump’s extended family was at the Women’s March against his policies in Washington DC. With this in mind, we thought we’d put the topic of extended family into the Petri dish.
Pioneers
Prospectors
Settlers
Say that living near extended family is “Unimportant” or “Completely unimportant”
17%
8%
14%
The findings are surprising to say the least – with status-conscious Prospectors far less likely to be indifferent about extended family that Settlers or Pioneers. Indeed, before firing up the test tubes our assumption would’ve been that individualistic Prospectors would be the most indifferent to extended family. We’d have put Settlers down as far and away the most likely to believe blood’s thicker than water – which shows how much we know!
There are two potential ideas as to where this surprising finding might come from. The first is that Prospectors’ desire for status or popularity plays out with family as well as friends. The second is that BME groups – and especially the Asian community, among whom the notion of family is often culturally very strong – are more likely to be Prospectors. But these things only partially explain the finding, and it would be fascinating to delve a little deeper.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the TCC Weekly’s eccentric country cousin:
Get your Trump fix by watching Trump Draw, debating whether his new words should be included in Oxford dictionary, and seeing the Dutch welcoming Trump in his own words.
