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:
Today we look, in our Values Lab, at why modern men will wear pink but won’t cry in front of people? What are the values elements to this?
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, where the metrosexual and the macho mingle each Friday. Today features – yes, you are reading this right – Nazi raccoons.
The Values Lab is based on the Values Modes segmentation tool – created by Cultural Dynamics and used by TCC– which divides the population into ethics-driven Pioneers, aspirational Prospectors, and threat-wary Settlers. Take the test here to see which you are.
Big boys don't cry but they do wear pink
A recent Times article looked at attitudes to modern masculinity, based on a survey with the public (see here for more). The findings are interesting, suggesting major steps in a progressive direction when it comes to gender roles, but a continued – and perhaps accelerating – difficulty in talking about emotions.
We thought we’d put this in the Values Lab. The results are surprisingly uniform, showing universal agreement that ‘a man can be gentle and sensitive and still a real man’ (see below). The truly macho view that a man should not display their feelings is rare, this would suggest. And it is not tied to values.
We did find, however, that there were values differences when you used a different statement – ‘It is hard to have a real or intimate conversation with a man’ (see below). There was fairly warm agreement in the socially conservative top half of the map, and almost none in the bottom half.
The key difference with this statement, compared with the one above, is that it asks what is happening, rather than how people believe things should be.
In a certain respect this difference between theory and practice has parallels with the Times report. A public opposition to traditional gender roles is widespread; but there remain big differences – by age, by background and by values – in how comfortable many men feel practicing this in their daily lives.
And finally, Charlie’s Attic, the part of the Weekly that’s comfortable wearing any colour:
Read up on the bank robbery that created Stockholm Syndrome.
Attend this RSA event – on how failure can help us to thrive.
And get stuck into the topic properly with this book.
Find out what happens when 5 million bees fall off a lorry.
Get your teeth into the latest bright idea from Greggs.
Join the search for the most important bass guitar in history.
Listen to the voice of the people, when it comes to which colour the Metropolitan line is.
