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 Tombolos from their Oxbow Lakes.
This week we look, in our Behaviour Change section, at the impact of having children on social attitudes. What does increased social conservatism among parents mean for behaviour change experts?
And of course, there’s the Friday crèche that is Charlie’s Attic, this week including an explanation of why 13 is unlucky.
We were curious about this recent article, about a new study of how values evolve as people age. It shows that people who have had children tend to be more socially conservative. And it posits that having children, rather than growing old itself, is the key reason why social conservatism is stronger among older cohorts.
The authors explain that “People want societies that protect their investments, and having kids is an investment in family.” They add that: “parents might grow more safety-conscious, preferring a society with fewer people they perceive as threatening and more people in protective roles. This might make socially conservative policies such as harsher criminal sentencing…more appealing.”
The research is based on detailed analysis of data in countries across the world, and controls for other factors, such as religion. The map below shows how strong the correlation between conservatism and parenthood is in each one.
Bobby Duffy’s recent book, Generations: Does When You’re Born Shape Who You Are? (reviewed by the Financial Times here), also looked at the relationship between age and politics. It asked, among other things, whether a drift to the right is an inevitable part of ageing or is specific to certain cohorts. The above research into the role of parenthood is an important accompaniment to this discussion – particularly given that birth rates are falling in many developed nations.
These are important questions to understand in relation to UK party politics, given that age has increasingly replaced class as a predictor of voting behaviour. (The commentator Louise Perry describes here how the topic is already being politicised by some in the US). But we have filed this particular topic under ‘Behaviour Change’ not ‘Polls, Politics and Policy’ this week, because it feels relevant to the broader question of how you persuade people in the first place.
The fact that loss aversion and risk become stronger as people start families helps to explain the underlying motivations behind a range of personal decisions people make – from volunteering to panic-buying. It might partially explain, for example, the different ways in which you promote green attitudes for different age cohorts. Are pro-environmental behaviours part of an ethical lifestyle you seek to champion, or are they a form of security for the future? Likewise, should public health campaigns focus on ‘living your best life’ or on protecting what you have?
None of these questions are easy. But by engaging with questions of investment, risk and security, social marketers can better engage with the deep, underlying factors which motivate many social conservatives.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the rotating mobile above your Weekly cot:
Decide (with the benefit of hindsight) if this chicken korma version of Boris Johnson really was an omen.
