How can qualitative researchers help candidates, causes and brands best make their case when information alone is not enough.
Criss-crossing the United States listening to voters has given me a first-hand perspective into the tense anger and raw frustration polarizing the American electorate.
But conservatives and liberals aren’t just describing two different Americas, they’re also struggling to agree on the facts. In the heat of a focus group, discussion among those on both the left and right can lapse into a rejection of established evidence and an airing of outlandish conspiracies.
Isn’t this just grand-standing? – Showing off in front of other participants, and trying to get a rise out of the moderator? Yes to a degree, but it also reveals a deeper truth. In taking a more extreme stance than the person who just spoke, or sharing an even more far-fetched conspiracy, participants are seeking to signal membership of their political tribe.
They’re making sure too there’s no chance their conservative or liberal bona fides can be called into question by their peers – a crucial driver when politics today is heavily driven by deep hostility toward the other side.
We should then not fight shy of conformity effects in focus groups. We still need to tease out dissenting views but seeing how participants can out-do each other is a real reflection of crowd-like behavior online and in real-life. As psychologists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber highlight, when like-minded people “argue”, all they’re doing is giving each other further reasons to back up their existing views; or as put by David Brooks, thinking is bonding.
The information myth
What this has brought home too is how we can’t rely on information alone to change opinions. Not just in politics, but also in communications and marketing, we can delude ourselves into thinking that if people only knew more that they will come around. It’s just about making sure they hear the right message.
But this is a comforting illusion – borne out by how often those who are most “informed” will just cherry-pick arguments that fit with their existing assumptions.
How do we then make the best case, whether that’s for a candidate, cause or brand?
Work with the grain of existing values
Communication only works when it strikes a chord with the audience’s existing values; if not, it will be rejected. Participants may keep the moderator happy by saying they like something, but if it doesn’t speak to their core values, it won’t make a blind bit of difference in the real world.
Rather than overload focus group guides with endless stimulus, we need to take time to understand the audience’s worldview. This is about immersive qualitative research and asking broad open-ended questions to understand aspirations and anxieties, whether for their own lives, families or nation at large.
Connect messaging to deep-seated goals
When looking at reactions to a message, we can often find ourselves thinking about rational and emotional responses. However, neither is quite right.
- Looking at how participants rationally debate a message can give us a false positive on how voters are likely to encounter the message in the real world – when they’ll be very unlikely to pay the same level of attention.
- Understanding intuitive responses helps – particularly when you hear participants getting louder in response to a message – but misses the nuances of when people are considering topics that matter to their lives and communities, rather than a consumer product.
What’s more insightful is understanding how a message can speak to core human goals – whether that’s boosting self-esteem or status, avoiding threats, or nurturing others such as your kids or those around you.
Move the choice from the circle of concern to circle of influence
Wendy Gordon outlined how people look at challenging issues through the lens of whether they can have influence or just concern.
- Climate change is an issue we may be deeply concerned about, but one where we can feel helpless to influence on our own.
- Where we send our kids to school or the jobs we choose tend however to be in the circle of influence, though by no means always the case depending on circumstances.
But, when a choice is within the circle of influence, we’re more likely to take care to weigh up the evidence and think more deliberatively – as the stakes feel higher, and what we decide is more likely to impact our day-to-day lives. Conversely, when it’s a choice beyond our control, we’re more likely to rely on what others do or let our biases lead.
We need to spend time exploring how to make an issue or choice more relevant, and to show why it truly matters. Rather than testing a volley of different messages, we need to focus on what would raise the stakes.
Always remember that we don’t like to admit to changing our views
Psychologist Tali Sharot points out that we don’t like to admit changing our mind, and we don’t like to go against what others in our group think – as this involves a social cost or means contradicting our sense of personal identity.
In order to counter these uncomfortable emotions, we’re much more likely to point to a changing context, along the lines of Ronald Reagan’s quip that “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the party left me.” Qualitative research is well positioned to pick up on those well-meaning verbal sleights of hand, and also the cues that will give people the social permission to shift their actions.
Even before the “post-truth era”, qualitative researchers have long known how hard it is to change opinions – and how we’re primed to reject information that goes up against our lived experiences. What we need is a renewed focus on understanding the full repertoire of people’s aspirations and beliefs, and the humility to work with the grain of their values.
This article is based on a presentation “Brands in the age of anger” given at ESOMAR’s 2019 Fusion event. For the full paper and video, ESOMAR members can go to ANA – ESOMAR Resource Library.
