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:
The leaves are falling and you’re doubtless throwing yourselves into the Hygge ethos with cocoa and a nice open fire. This week’s Weekly is a cracker – sorry conker – and particularly worth a read is the Behaviour Change section’s evaluation of victim-blaming.
For something a little lighter, meanwhile, don a stripy scarf and enter the blustery world of Charlie’s Attic – this week containing a test of which classic rock band you are (delighted that I am Pink Floyd).
Finally, a quick reminder that More Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box, Philip Cowley and Rob Ford’s fantastic new book is on special offer for TCC Weekly readers, now with a whopping 40% discount. Click here and enter the discount code (MSL40) at the checkout to get your copy.
David Evans
Director
If you see a link 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.
This week an article by Art Markman reviews recent research by Laura Niemi and Liane Young into the culture of victim-blaming. Niemi and Young’s study outlines two different human orientations: one that which leans towards individual wellbeing and caring, and one that which emphasises a binding connection to society, based on loyalty and purity.
Those with the latter leaning, the study claims, are instinctively suspicious of victims because – even if through no fault of their own – victims stand out from the group.This is a fascinating insight, which brings to mind Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. It also has echoes of Values Modes, with groupish Settlers much more likely to be cynical about things like individual rights. What’s really interesting is that it confounds the idea that being social-minded, makes you more compassionate, with a focus on the individual – according to Niemi and Young – making you in some ways less likely to victim-blame.
A dark new show that riffs on the Stanford Prisoner and Milgram experiments
This fascinating article looks at the intuitions of the very poor, and how nudge theories can be used to stop people in India from risky railway crossings
With over three months now passed since Brexit, PR professional Mike Hind rips into the Remain campaign’s use of disempowering semantics. And Tom Ewing explains why Vote Leave’s use of ‘fame, feeling and fluency’ led him to predict Brexit from the outset. At TCC we hold our hands up to thinking, like many, that Remain would win, on the basis status-driven Prospector instincts would hold out. What both Hind and Ewing show is that Leave’s empowerment message (‘Take control’) actually resonated with Prospectors more than Remain’s empowerment message (‘Stronger In’).
Alex Durig explores the social psychology of presidential polls (part1 here, part 2 here)
Read the amazing lowdown on Columbia’s referendum decision to vote against a peace deal in the drug wars
Health begins at work, according to a new meta-analysis that concludes that a job you enjoy helps you be healthier. City AM’s Harriet Green, meanwhile, gives standing at her desk a try, and finds herself pleasantly surprised.
Our own research has often found that work rather than workout is the place to start with staying healthy. Just as Jamie’s School Dinners put the emphasis on diet and education a few years back, it’s easy to see the next major pressure on employers being on the choices available in the office canteen.
Also this week:
“Lie back, think of England, and do a pull-up”: how memory affects our ability to do exercise
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.
This is our final week digging into the data behind Philip Cowley and Rob Ford’s More Sex, Lies & The Ballot Box (several academic publishers having kindly made these articles free). You can find the full set on our website here.
Learn about why more politics can mean less voting thanks to the internet paradox
Our own blog on the lessons on trust from More Sex, Lies & The Ballot Boxcan be found here. As we write in the piece, turning around the trust tanker isn’t an easy ask. Three chapters from the book in particular – by Harold Clarke, Phil Cowley and Ben Seyd respectively – underscore quite how tricky it’ll be.
From next week on we’ll be donning our lab coats/straitjackets (delete as appropriate), and getting back among the values data.
Also this week, take a look into the strange Danish sub-culture of Hygge. For those who haven’t yet come across it, this is a new existential trend, based on that towering philosophical pillar, cosiness. The Guardian’s Zoe Williams writes that the main problem with Hygge is that we all simultaneously want safety and adventure – perhaps suggesting a Settler-Pioneer paradox at the heart of the phenomenon.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, TCC’s beanbag filled sanctuary for soci-psychological wellbeing:
