Changing Perceptions by Understanding Underlying Beliefs

Hello!

Maybe we’re just aching for Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, but sometimes it feels like we’re all more disconnected than ever, with impossible-to-bridge fundamental divisions that keep bias and fear strong. 

But we’re not despairing quite yet. Why? Because we think that artistic activism can make the impossible possible. It’s not just a cute catch phrase – we’ve got methods.

Making meaningful change means doing more than preaching to the choir. We must make interventions that transform hearts and minds other than our own. One of the many tools we use is called The 5 Moral Foundations. If your goal is to reach new people - like those in the center - then it is critical to understand the foundational beliefs that drive decisions made by people who aren’t like you. 

Check out the 5 Moral Foundations tool below, along with some examples of artistic activists whose work we think recognizes and uses foundational beliefs to change perceptions and biases.

5 Moral Foundations

The axes are based on studies that measure how some conservatives and liberals tend to fall on moral scales. 

We use these axes in our workshops to help artists and activists engage new audiences where they are.  As artistic activists, the goal is not only to understand, sympathize and be respectful about strongly held beliefs of our “adversaries,” but, far more importantly, to create more sophisticated campaigns with insight into moral beliefs that strengthen our work across the board.

How to Use this as a Tool

You can get more details on our site about the 5 Moral Foundations and, by yourself or with your group, map out how people understand the issue you’re working on within each of these axes. Find the places where the moral narratives might be more widely shared and so could be emphasized in your campaign, or a place where there might be room to shift.

We used this tool when we worked with sex worker rights activists, brainstorming together how to change stigmas around sex workers. By shifting the focus of debates  away from the ‘Sanctity/Degradation” axis, where there is a bigger gap between conservatives and liberals, creative and cultural interventions could engage audiences in thinking about sex workers as workers being subjected to unfair and unsafe working conditions, which is more in the Care/Harm and Fairness/Cheating axes. By focusing on how sex workers are being harmed, and how the system is cheating them of fair wages, equal access to law enforcement protections, and basic human rights, these creative campaigns engage audiences around deeper shared moral beliefs.

What issues are you working on? How can you tie your objectives to the 5 moral foundations?

If you want to know more about how to use these axes in your own projects, and how we use them in combination with exercises to help create effective campaigns...

Behind the Scenes with an Artistic Activist: Favianna Rodriguez

How do you transform perceptions of migrants through artistic activism? 

Favianna Rodriguez, prolific art activist and Executive Director of CultureStrike, collaborates to create interventions shifting the perceptions of migrants from those “cheating the system” by using the image of the monarch butterfly to show migration as a natural system of the planet. We think one of the reasons this works is because it moves the conversation out of the Authority/Subversion and Fairness/Cheating axes into other areas of social thought, like the Sanctity of Nature, fairness and care we give to migrants, and how discrimination against migrants betrays the American promise.

In our interview, Favianna shares her creative process behind the "Migration is Beautiful" butterfly, an image that has been widely adopted as a symbol of the migrant rights movement. We also discuss her theory of change, which involves a strategic focus on cultural change over policy change, as she argues that policy is "the final manifestation of an idea," that stems directly from culture.   

Combating Ageism through Artistic Activism

How do you transform stigma around aging through artistic activism? 

We want to share this fantastic project, I Won’t Grow Up, by workshop alumni (and gerontologist, professor of theater at the UW-Milwaukee and MacArthur Fellow) Anne Basting, transforming 12 rural nursing homes from places that non-residents never want to go into vibrant cultural centers where beauty and meaning is made and lived. She collaborated with artists, caregivers, elders, and volunteers in a bold reimagining of the story of Peter Pan.  This project comes to fruition with three site-specific stagings of WENDY'S NEVERLAND, in three nursing homes across Kentucky.  Dates and locations are listed on the project's website.

Actipedia: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

With new horrors undermining the moral authority of the Catholic Church revealed almost daily, we’d like to draw attention to our favorite Sisters: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were founded in 1979 by a small group of gay men in San Francisco, California that began dressing as nuns in public scenarios to advocate for conflicts involving the LGBTQ community, AIDS, and safer sex education. Their first appearance came at a time that the Castro District was going through economic decline while HIV/AIDS had simultaneously began appearing in the area.  Read more about them here on Actipedia.

Actipedia is our user contributed database of creative actions from around the world.

Do you have an artistic action to share? 

What we are reading

There were 2 recent Op Eds in the NYT about the repercussions of centrism.

“Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists” by David Adler
-and-
“Attack of the Fanatical Centrists: Of obsessions, vanity and delusions of superiority” by Paul Krugman

Enjoy this conversation between the Steves’ disembodied heads on our Slack channel:

Thanks for Reading

If any of this is helpful, please pass it on, and throw a couple bucks in our hat - your donations really make a difference for this little nonprofit.

Be in touch! We’d love to hear what you’re up to, and if any of these resources are useful.

Keep It Real,

All of us at C4AA