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 your Behaviour Change section, at the ‘hero’s journey’. How can reimagining your life as a hero create a better society?
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the part of the Weekly with its underpants over its trousers each Friday. Today’s Attic includes the ‘best joke’ at the Edinburgh Festival (don’t get too excited).
'I need a hero'
We really enjoyed this article, which recently appeared in Time Magazine. It is based on a study from earlier this year, tracing the link between seeing your life as a ‘hero’s journey’ and finding meaning within it. “The way that people tell their life story shapes how meaningful their lives feel,” the author of the study says. “And you don’t have to live a super heroic life or be a person of adventure – virtually anyone can rewrite their story as a Hero’s Journey.”
The Time Magazine piece describes the anatomy of this journey, based on seven key elements set out in the research: protagonist, shift, quest, allies, challenge, transformation, and legacy. In many ways this is like a rudimentary Creative Writing course, establishing the key elements upon which any story must rely. But the results can help with many elements of daily life, according to the authors, and even work to tackle issues like depression.
At first glance ‘the hero’s journey’ prognosis may sound very individualistic – even narcissistic. But looked at another way, it is close to the opposite. Its implication is that even those doing less skilled or respected roles in society need meaning – and that providing a narrative template with which to create this meaning is important.
The relevance of this to behaviour change is obvious. The ‘hero’s journey’ idea is about giving people agency, which is what social marketers are usually looking to do. It is not uncommon to see practitioners use strap-lines and hashtags like ‘Recycling Heroes’ (see, for example, the highly successful ‘Save a life, give blood’ campaign). And there is no shortage of adverts borrowing the ‘not all heroes wear capes’ mantra.
The ‘hero’s journey’ insight, as set out in the study, gives an extra level of detail and texture to this. It goes beyond strap-lines and describes how a narrative can be constructed block-by-block, in order to add meaning and purpose to the small steps which behaviour change experts are often promoting.
And finally Charlie’s Attic, the part of the Weekly where we don our cape and take to the skies:
