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:
This week we look, in our Behaviour Change section, at why people hate being scammed. We look at how this applies to reported increases in ‘bregret’ about leaving the EU.
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, where everything happens for a reason. Today’s Attic includes a test of which Winnie the Pooh character reflects your psyche.
MRP Polling at the end of last month showed voters beginning to regard Brexit as a mistake, with almost every UK seat now thinking the UK was wrong to leave. Liberal publications like the New European dubbed the phenomenon ‘Bregret’.
It’s been nearly seven years since the Referendum, and Euroscepticism has held steady for much of that time – despite negotiations looking chaotic and few ‘wins’ being scored. Remainers may feel inclined to ask “What took you so long?” We were interested in this question, not from a political angle but from a behaviour change one. And we wonder if a recent article for Time magazine, by psychologist Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, holds some answers.
The piece does not mention the Single Market or Freedom of Movement once. Instead, it looks at the phenomenon of being ‘scammed’ and asks why it’s so painful. The author writes that “feeling cheated is an unusually intense cognitive and emotional experience. It is so aversive that people will go way out of their way to make sure it doesn’t happen.” As Wilkinson-Ryan goes on to put it, “It sucks to be a sucker.”
The response, once you realise what’s happened, may be to go and get your money back from the swindler who took it off you. This, perhaps, is what Remain campaigners hoped would happen post-2016 – to bring the topic back to Brexit. Hence their emphasis on the £350m bus slogan and the public having been lied to. Leavers would march on parliament demanding a refund once they realised, Remainers hoped.
Yet the feeling of being tricked out of something is so unpleasant that we wonder if it can have a counter-effect – particularly with an event like Brexit, which is far more complex than someone selling you a fake watch. You’re not readily going to admit to being scammed, especially if you think the item you’re paid over the odds for may still turn out to be a bargain. Thus, buyers’ remorse was not the powerful drug which EU enthusiasts hoped it would be. ‘Bregret’, such as it is, has happened only slowly.
We’ve chosen an overtly political metaphor to illustrate this. But the fear of being scammed applies to other elements of behaviour change and persuasion. No one likes to admit to being sold a pup and pointing out that someone’s been ‘had’ will often fail to produce the desired effect.
Whether or not you agree that the public were ‘lied to’ about Brexit, the act of pointing it out was perhaps always a fool’s errand. Hardened Europhiles, who believed it was a con from the start, may never get the moment of catharsis they expected.
And finally this week, the den of socio-psychological con artistry that is Charlie’s Attic:
Don’t believe the hype about Big Ben – check out Little Ben next time you’re in central London.
