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:
Behaviour change ~ Does fulfilling values entrench them?
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Märket from their Market.
Today we look, in our Behaviour Change section, at a key question for social marketers. By using the status-orientated frames of your audience – rather than emphasising your own values – do you ultimately harm or help your cause?
And of course, there’s the psephological and psychological Hall of Fame that is Charlie’s Attic. Or should that be Hall of Mirrors? This week’s Attic features Britain’s best scone.
Emphasising status
We recently stumbled across this article, published last month, about status. It is a fascinating piece, describing what the author calls the ‘status spiral’. In particular, if picks out three tricks, used by con artists, which exploit our quest for status. These are: the trap of the inner ring (when there is always a more successful clique to join); the bodybuilder trap (when we reinforce the underlying belief that something is wrong with us); and the trap of false belonging (whereby we achieve a type of status which stops us showing vulnerability). Each of these, the author argues, tightens the ‘status spiral’.
We found this premise interesting, and it got us thinking about values. This isn’t a Values Lab Weekly, but an interesting element of the wider debate about social values relates to whether fulfilling values helps audiences to surpass these values – or whether it entrenches them. By selling green behaviours through appeals to status and image, for example, do you embed the desire for status, moving people away from the ethical choice-making that will ultimately save the planet? Or does changing the behaviour ultimately encourage them to ultimately adopt greener values? To put it another way: by using the frames of another values group, do social campaigns feed out the rope in a tug of war or give people a ladder to climb up?
At TCC our understanding of values and frames is very much based on the latter idea. As we discussed at length a few years ago, Values Modes takes a neutral view about whether certain values are more moral. And, because it is based on Maslow’s idea of ‘unmet psychological needs’, it works on the basis that only by achieving a psychological need can you move past it. One of the three Values Modes tribes are Prospectors, for example, who are heavily motivated by status and the esteem of others. Yet by using frames which speak to this motivation you can embed social behaviours and ultimately help groups to fulfil underlying needs.
This is not to deny the very good points which the original article made about the impact on personal happiness of pursuing status. But we are more sceptical about the idea that status is a mirage you can never meet or fulfil.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the Joneses we keep up with each Friday:
Find out how long it took America’s longest running comedy series to go off the boil.
Have a great day out with your new baby (Ed: Also remember that it’s never too early to introduce them to the delights of Lidl, Greggs, Peacocks and Wilko’s if you want them to have a balanced life).
