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 JAM from their Jam.
This week we’ve got lessons in meaningful engagement through the psychology of protest, in polling and Facebook vote suppression from the US, and the Values take on the big Toblerone debate. There are also surprisingly rich pickings in healthy eating interventions in a slimmed down Health Hub. And as always, we end with the Theatre of the Absurd that is Charlie’s Attic. This week it contains classic vocals minus the backing tracks (really worth a listen – honest) and the world leading study on 21st century British life.
David Evans
Director
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2016 has in some ways been a year of protest, from the much-vaunted protest votes that might have helped propel Brexit and Trump, to the counter-demonstrations decrying both of them. J. R. Thorpe has written for Bustle about what drives some to protest and others not to, with some interesting lessons for organisations of all shapes and sizes that represent others and have to make tough decisions.
As the article outlines many of the dominant theories shaping our understanding of the drive to protest, there is plenty that chimes with our experience of helping organisations to engage effectively with the people they represent, particularly around issues that can be sensitive or threatening. The importance of clearly communicating the need for change or the issue concerned is clear, with examples of ‘system justification’ helping to reassure people that it is justified and necessary – anything that pushes people to think the system is working against them can lead to protest and hostility (just look at the declining trust in politics, as noted in our recent blog).
The article also draws attention to the effects of ‘relative deprivation’, when we’re angered by the perception we are losing out compared with another group, and the importance of social identity, but perhaps the overriding theme, and the biggest take-home lesson for governments, health bodies, and any organisations charged with making tough decisions, is the power of legitimate channels and meaningful engagement – while the feeling that there are no legitimate ways to have our say pushes us to protest via contempt for the official process, one of the greatest drivers to protest is the feeling of empowerment it provides.
By offering the right environment and tools for people to have a say with confidence that they are being heard, organisations have the opportunity to generate that empowerment themselves, before protest and hostility take over.
In the wake of the political turmoil of the past fortnight, it’s the first of our three P’s that are more under the microscope than ever. For days on end we’ve been confronted with articles and think pieces on ‘why the polls got it wrong’. So what can pollsters and those who rely on them learn from this? Ben Clarke of The Shipyard has written this week to try to answer that question.
Clarke explains that the big strength of big data polling is also its key weakness – what he calls the Big Data False Certainty Bias is predicated on the assumption that the future will repeat the past. When events diverge from the norms of the past, dubbed ‘Black Swan events’ like this election, that data works against them.
So how can we learn to account for these events, to expect the unexpected? First, Clarke says, we can be humbler and more honest that data is never 100% certain. Then we can start to ask about what might cause breaks from past trends, and how much they’re likely to do that. With more in-depth behavioural study based on those key questions, it’s possible to build a richer understanding. Read the article in full here.
What motivates you to eat healthily? Encouraging a healthy diet is undoubtedly one of the main challenges we face in improving public health, and arguments about how best to do this have been raging for years. Trying to get closer to the answer, TCC associate Matthew Wood of University of Brighton’s Business School has co-authored a study in next month’s Eating Behaviours journal with Paurav Shukla, on ‘Weight bias, health consciousness and behavioural actions (activities)’ (£).
From asking adults about their diet, attitudes and beliefs towards obese people, health consciousness and normative influences, the study finds significant differences between the behaviour of people with and without obese family members, and correlation between anti-fat attitudes and self-perceived dietary behaviour. Surprisingly it also reveals that health consciousness and activities designed to enable healthy eating are negatively, rather than positively, related to self-perceived dietary behaviour.
The suggested lesson for all you behavioural interventionists out there is that perhaps raising health consciousness and pushing support activities might not be so effective in changing behaviour after all. Focussing on the negative impact of obesity itself, however, may still have the desired effect in alarming people to change.
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.
It’s a big couple of weeks for consumerism. Not only is it every shopaholic’s favourite day of the year, Black Friday, but in other news Toblerone, that staple of duty free splurges, has been raised for debate in the Scottish Parliament. Colin Beattie MSP laments the controversial widening of the gap between the Swiss bar’s iconic peaks as an emblem of the ruin Brexit has in store for the UK.
We scooped up as many sweets as we could and hauled them down to the Values Lab and, in between bites and complaints about chocolate stains on white lab coats, checked out which Values groups are likely to be the most affected by the seismic changes to the confectionary landscape.
Unsurprisingly, more nostalgic Settlers, in the top right, are the most likely to feel sceptical about advertising claims and that today’s products don’t have the same longevity as those of yesteryear. Perhaps more unexpected are the levels of agreement from concerned Pioneers, just below Settlers on the right, and socially conservative Prospectors, in the top left. For the former, pessimism about the big business of advertising might motivate this feeling, while normally optimistic Prospectors on the socially conservative side tend to share the Settler desire for certainty, so the ‘old days’ are more likely to provide comfort.
Also this week:
This Forbes article explains critics’ reluctance to praise Lebron James’ improvement in the context of our natural inclination towards blind spots that help us with everyday decision making, but make it harder for us to see from other points of view. It’s a principle that’s at the heart of the challenge in getting different Values groups to understand each other.
Research reveals that, by age 3, we already have an idea of who’s boss and who to follow, backing up the theory that most young children are Settlers, with security, authority and rules forming the basis of their worldview.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, where the only rule is that there is no authority or security:
