Thread by @RohanIrvine

Day 3 @UXAustralia!

Our keynote is Dr Jess Berentson Shaw — 'Narratives for change: How effective stories help us build new systems.

#uxaustralia #uxaustralia2020

Jess starts by acknowledging the three Iwi

Jess worked around the world as an 'evidence agitator' and believes all the knowledge of the world can be shared and used to create an inclusive society that meets everyones needs and centres the environment.

Jess for many years used excellent facts didn't move people into action they way she thought it should.

Jess wrote a book — A Matter of Fact

Then co-founded a narrative research collaborative The Workshop.

Jess will talk to us about why narratives are important to make system change — why facts are important but not sufficient — why we need to understand the landscape and a framework for how to make systems change.

Stories shape lives.

in the 1860's banker, politicians and business owners were a circle of men in Auckland — they wanted land, and they wanted the land south of Auckland.

Māori, Iwi can together to push against the attempt to take their land.

The Circle of men wrote and circulated fake stories about the violence of Māori to justify an invasion by the colonisers.

A very common pattern that lead to the crown confiscating land from Māori.

It echoed down the generations, shapes the way white people view Māori, policy, lives and responses.

Jess is showing us a political ad recently about how these stories were used to create political pressure to suppress Māori ability for self determination.

We can use the power of these narratives to counter the oppressive narratives.

Jess is sharing a metaphor about systems change using a stream.

As you go up the stream you find why people are falling in and drowning, you see things that aren't evident when you're pulling people out of the river.

Systems change is about grappling with agency and power.

Are they pushing people into the steam?
Are the creating the conditions where people fall in?

Why are facts insufficient?

Facts and evidence don't work the way we think they should in showing people how these systems are affecting others, and they don't help convince people to change.

Daniel Kahneman — Thinking fast and slow.

Fast thinking uses trust, perceived expertise as shortcuts about what information we take on.

Neutral evidence is never received neutrally.

It is hard to slow our thinking down and learn.

One of the things that our fast thinking system often means we attribute cause and affect to what we can directly sense, see, hear and describe.

We think in concrete terms and individual behaviour about how the world works.

Normalcy bias—

It leads us to underestimate threats.

We think they way it is, is the way it will always be

Sunk cost thinking—

We throw money at things we've already spent money

Our fast thinking is we assume people are short of good information, because they just need more information. The information defeciet model.

Fast thinking is reinforced by our own context.

Our environment at the moment is filled with a huge amount of information.

It's too much for a person to be able to assess it.

It's filled with shallow and unhelpful narratives, particularly digital media.

Disinformation — false information spread to entrench power

Misinformation — false information spread unintentionally

Us vs Them Narrative —

People working for change are actually trying to take something from us.

This story creates a zero sum game.

We can inadvertently create these zero sum games in our narratives when we want to change.

We can tend to think if we speak loud enough about our facts people will care and act.

But the way we communicate doesn't create an alternative narrative, instead it reinforces the dominant narrative.

Climate change has a huge amount of fear driven narratives around climate change, it doesn't help to surface the complex changes that need to happen. It raises a fatalism narrative where people feel completely out of control.

If we change the way we talk and communicate based on good science we can create the space for systems change.

The narratives help build new mental models which lead to people making change.

Example: Australian Marriage Equality

Started using facts, myth busting and language that people skipped over, and a lot of different narratives.

Then the narrative strategy changed.

They used values. Using love as a powerful connecting value.

It helped all of the other work overcome some of the shallow thinking.

It opened heterosexual people's mind to the ask which is what it needed to do.

Example — London transport shift

Had a big opposition from a powerful lobby.

They wanted to know how the opposition would respond and they created social proof counter narratives.

It was ultimately successful.

The science of narrative change

—Map the landscape of narratives

—Understand how we might be surfacing them with out own communication, and look for the more helpful thinking, find and test narratives.

—Equip field of practice to move together, across fields of interests

Building Block for change — A framework for how to build new narratives

— Know your audience
— Present a concrete vision for a better world
— Tap into intrinsic values
— Provide better explanations
— Find trusted story tellers.

1. Audience defined by their position on your issue

Base
Persuadable — majority of people
Hard to persuade

Avoid using your time and resources on those who are firmly opposed.
It leads to myth busting and amplifies shallow thinking.

Test your communications on your base and the persuadable. Don't just test your message on your base.

An effective message will activate your base and share with perdsuadables.

The tipping point for change can come as little as 25%.

2. Open with the vision of the better world.

Opening with our narratives with problems won't shift people. It gives people little motivation to change when faced with only problems.

It's how we open, we talk about the problems after we lay out clear and engaging pathways.

Sell the cake, then you can talk about the ingredients later.

Tell them about the better world and the changes they'll experience and how it will affect a better life.

Name the people who do things - people with agency, usually with power.

Describe their behaviours

Avoid villainizing - generalisations about groups tend to get the persuadables backs up.

3. Connect with peoples most helpful values.

Values are at the heart of peoples beliefs, behaviours and emotions.

Our perceptions of what people value are often incorrect, so we can often misinterpret them.

How do we put values into our narratives?

Common cause created a values map from social psychologist.

commoncause.org

Intrinsic and Extrinsic values

We hold a mixture of them but we prioritise some.

When we prioritise intrinsic values that's associated with thoughts, behaviours and actions more helpful to inclusive communities.

Extrinsic values are associated with behaviours and actions harmful to our collective community.

Few of us will do the thing we aspire to most if we think that nobody cares.

People think that other people are more focussed on extrinsic values — that's the dominant narrative that politics has been using for decades.

4. Better explanations for thinking fast & slow

We need to use language, frames, metaphors to present our facts in a clear narrative.

Explaining is grounded in how people's thinking works and aims to open a door.

Frames are pre-prepared explanations through which to view and explain an issue.

We can't negate a frame that exists in society but we can create a new frame.

Three frames for Covid—

Economy is the most important
Common good frame
Negating facts frame

Metaphor takes something common and every day to connect a complex idea

When we use weather as a metaphor for the economy, we frame that the economy is not in control by humans and so we can't do anything about it as opposed to a bus metaphor where we have control.

Use explanatory chains, where you embed the facts deep within the narrative with a story around it.

5. Storytellers and social proof

Credibility and trust is part of our fast thinking system.

— Provide positive social proof to improve credibility
— Use messengers with shared values
— Right messenger WITH the right message

This is sophisticated work, there's complexity in it — but as people who have much in common over our experience we have much to say in terms of creating narratives for change.

Q: Fast brains and shallow narrative explain conspiracy theories?

A: There's often a trust issue with people who belive conspiracies. People who don't trust the government, excluded groups or people with bad experience with systems.

For groups that don't feel trust in the institutions it's important to think about these groups and who is trusted within them so you can build narratives they can connect with.

Just saying "trust the scientists, trust the doctors' isn't going to work.

Thanks Jess! Amazing presentation and I would recommend everyone listening to it when it comes out!

#uxaustralia #uxaustralia2020

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