Extrinsic motivations and the law of unintended consequences
Social and environmental campaigning is plagued by the law of unintended consequences. As Common Cause has long highlighted, campaigns and communications intended to elicit deeper expressions of social or environmental concern also influence attitudes and behaviours in seemingly unrelated domains. For example, some communications urging uptake of one environment-friendly behaviour may undermine commitment to another […]
Reflecting on Indigenous Wisdom and the Urge to Oppress: A Continuing Dialogue
Last year, we shared insights from a series of conversations we hosted with Indigenous people, exploring the potential of a social psychological model of values to support their social and environmental justice campaigns. At the time, we viewed this as the beginning of a broader, ongoing conversation. We were eager to invite voices from other […]
How should the new UK Government talk about climate action?
The public tide is turning when it comes to climate action. We know that more people than ever before consider the climate and nature crisis to be real and of the utmost importance to tackle. Despite little mention of climate change during election campaigning, we have seen MPs elected from across the political spectrum who […]
Queering Conservation: Addressing heteronormativity* in conservation practice
Early this Spring, a small group of us – mostly queer identifying, plus a couple of straight allies – spent a couple of days together in the beautiful grounds of Gregynog Hall in mid Wales, to dive deep into an inquiry of what it would mean to queer conservation. This was building on a series […]
Changing our minds means changing how we feel
Common Cause Foundation has long highlighted the ways in which movements for social and environmental change often rehearse and embed a neoliberal worldview. This may be deliberate (a strategy to assimilate responses to multiple forms of crisis within neoliberal frameworks) or it may be inadvertent (many campaigns assume that the best way to build support […]
Culture as an incubator of extrinsic values
In a recent opinion piece for The Guardian, George Monbiot proposed that one (little explored) reason for the rise of Donald Trump is that Trump is “a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values”. He reminds us that our values are heavily influenced by the societies we are a part of, including the political environment. The […]
Challenging Cultural Assumptions In Our Work
Common Cause has worked for many years to help challenge cultural influences that serve to erode intrinsic values or that work to strengthen extrinsic values. We have focused attention on the advertising industry, media, the arts and cultural sector, and sport. Sometimes we have taken aim at the broader political movements that accelerate these processes […]
As the Murdoch era draws to a close, it’s time for a mainstream media that recognises its role in elevating intrinsic values
It seems fitting that, the week after Rupert Murdoch’s resignation as Chair of Fox News and News Corp, I find myself at the Responsible Media Forum’s 11th Annual Mirror or Movers Conference “dedicated to investigating, debating and challenging the impacts of media content on society and the environment”. It would be hard to understate the […]
This Barbie Wants Narrative Change
[This blog contains (minor) spoilers of the Barbie movie.] Undoubtedly, there can be very few human beings on the face of the planet that have managed to escape the knowledge that, this summer, a new pink-tastic blockbuster movie hit cinema screens across the world. Directed by the once indie-filmmaker, Greta Gerwig, the Barbie movie came […]
Could animal freedom campaigners and LGBT+ rights campaigners work together for the benefit of all? The answer is in their shared values…
Dr Rob Udale, who leads Animal Think Tank’s Narrative research project, recently conducted research which found that orienting an audience to a social justice issue (LGBT+ rights) led to stronger expressions of support for animal freedom. This seemed to us to be a great example of bleedover between values underpinning concern for social justice and […]