Last week, forty-six people gathered in Seattle to learn about How to Bring About Large-Scale Behavior Change. In this workshop we set about designing campaigns for social change armed with knowledge from the cognitive and behavioral sciences. Participants explored the emotional foundations of morality and experienced the nuances of human decision-making. Armed with this knowledge, [...]
As I prepare for the workshop next week on How to Bring About Large-Scale Behavior Change, it occurs to me that people might want to know why I believe it is finally possible to intentionally design campaigns that result in significant behavioral change. Here are five things I’ve discovered that lead me to the conclusion [...]
This video provides a Marxist critique of capitalism in the context of the financial meltdown. I would like to draw particular attention to the various belief systems, modes of understanding, and implicit assumptions built into the global economy. In order to build a better economic system, we’ll need to be explicit about these cognitive elements [...]
I’d like to draw your attention to some excellent research conducted by our friend Anat Shenker-Osorio for the Progressive Ideas Network, in partnership with the Institute for Policy Studies. She explored the idealized cognitive models, conceptual metaphors, and semantic frames that shape how inequality is understood in American politics. An overview of her findings can [...]
I’d like to share with you some of the things I’ve learned about putting frame analysis into practice, both during my time at the Rockridge Institute and afterward as a strategy consultant and professional trainer with Cognitive Policy Works. My experiences span many different settings including: Deconstructing the cultural and political frames of an academic [...]
One of the most confounding challenges facing the sustainability movement is how to bring about a massive shift in human behavior. This master class explores a variety of powerful insights from cognitive science for developing successful social change strategies. You’ll learn how meaning arises in the workings of the human brain, why emotions are absolutely vital for engaging people in a process of persistent change, and what the root causes are that have driven societal institutions to the edge of ecological collapse.
This video is a graphic animation of Jeremy Rifkin presenting the evolution of empathy. It powerfully expresses the innate human capacity for feeling connected with others and suggests that there may be a way to rethink the human narrative in order to achieve lasting solidarity as we confront global challenges.
I was honored to discover this blog article today, written by historian and writer Lawrence DiStasi, titled Critiquing Rational Actors. It was inspired by my earlier work on self-interest and builds the argument further. Here’s a snippet: “To sum up: the market fundamentalists who have nearly destroyed the American economy have done so under the [...]
Are you someone who struggles to understand why people behave the way they do in politics? Perhaps you’ve been confused by all the fervor against gay marriage. Or maybe you’re taken aback by the strong emotions waged against government-sponsored health care. To understand political behaviors like these, you’ll need to become familiar with the psychology [...]
Self-interest fundamentalism was the economic religion of the 20th Century. We are now in the midst of an economic reformation on par with the Enlightenment as we enter the new millennium. Have you noticed that a lot of people seem to think that appeals to self-interest lead to a moral and just society? No, I’m [...]
