WEBVTT

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I want to start with a warning today.

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I realize that beginning with a warning
may not be the smartest thing to do,

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but I'm just going to go for it.

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My warning is that although I'm here
to talk to you about communications,

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I actually have zero training
in communications,

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and I've never worked in PR.

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What I am

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is a psychological anthropologist.

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And what I study is the way
that culture influences how we think,

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how we process information,
how we make meaning of messages,

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and how we formulate
and come to decisions.

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And so, as a psychological anthropologist,
one of my goals here today

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is to convince you,
is to show you, that this ...

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is not true.

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(Laughter)

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That we should not be actively
dissuading our friends and colleagues

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from going into anthropology,


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and that instead, studying culture
and how people use it to think

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is an incredibly valuable tool
in the real world,

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and for our purposes today,

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can be an incredibly important
and effective thing

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in being a better communicator.

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And so, as an anthropologist
working in communications,

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I study two different things.

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First of all, I study public thinking,

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not public opinion,

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not the way that people answer a couple
of polling questions here or there,

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or conduct themselves
in a few focus groups

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in Cleveland or Kansas City -

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I'm from Cleveland,
I can make that joke, that's okay -

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but rather how people use culture
in a deep and highly predictable way

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to think about complex social issues;
issues like education or mental health,

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immigration or aging,
climate change or race inequity.

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So I am really excited
to talk to you about ...

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how culture helps us
be more effective communicators.

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The other thing that I'm going
to talk to you about

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is how through the way
that we present information

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we can get people to open up
an access dramatically different ways

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of thinking, of feeling, and of acting
about those social issues,

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and in a nutshell,
that is what framing is:

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how variations in the way
that we present information

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can lead people to dramatically different
perceptual and behavioral outcomes.

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And so I'm really, really - why not? -

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really excited to get the chance
to geek out about framing today.

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And I'll tell you
right from the beginning

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that geeking out about framing
is pretty much my all-time,

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absolute favorite thing to do,

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which I realize is kind of pathetic,
and probably a little bit sad.

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But it does mean that at least
one person in this room

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is going to have fun during this talk.

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(Laughter)

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That will be me, I will have fun.

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And so, what I want to do today
is to convince you, is to argue

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that even though you do not
think of yourselves

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all the time in this way

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and are not explicitly aware of it,
you are all communicators.

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And as communicators,
framing matters a great deal to you.

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So what I want to do is give you
two reasons why framing matters to you.

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And the first reason is, 
unfortunately, I'm in the position

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where I have to tell you
that you all have a problem.

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And you should know there aren't
11 more steps after this,

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it's not that kind of a meeting,
and it's not that kind of a problem.

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What I mean is that you have
a communications problem.

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You have a problem of perception.

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And the problem looks something like this:

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That you all have been in positions,
at one time or another,

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where you think you have the most perfect,

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awesome, slam-dunk -

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whatever sports metaphor you want to use -

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way of talking about
what you do and why it matters.

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Heck, it works with two of your
closest colleagues,

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what could go wrong
when it goes out to normal people,

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people who don't eat and breathe
and sleep your issues all the time?

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And you find that when this idea 
that made so much sense to you

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goes outside of your immediate circle,
it does one of two things.

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First of all, it lacks resonance.

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It doesn't have grip,
it goes in one ear and out the other.

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Secondly, probably more unfortunately
because it happens more frequently,

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that thing which worked
and was so brilliant in your own head

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goes out,

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and it has the exact opposite effect
on the people you're trying to persuade,

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on the people you're trying
to communicate with.

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And I'm not going to ask you to take
my word for anything today, right?

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I'm going to show you evidence
from the research that I do with my team

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that shows this.

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And I have a lot of pieces of examples,

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evidence of this you-say-they-think,
this lost-in-translation effect.

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I'm going to show you one today
that comes from some work that we've done

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to translate the science
of early childhood development.

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People who are in this field,
people who are developmental scientists,

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really want to talk
about adversity and stress,

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and the effects that stress and adversity
can have on young kids.

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And they say things like this:

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that persistent stress
can derail development

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and have negative long-term effects
on health and well-being.

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And if you're a developmental scientist,
you replace negative with deleterious

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because that's the way you talk.

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And so for folks who are in this field,

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this is true.

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There is an incredibly
deep body of science

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across a number of disciplines
which supports this point.

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Unfortunately,
when you take this idea out,

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to normal people,
to members of the general public,

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you get things
that look and sound like this:

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(Video) Man:
Life's hard. Supposed to be hard.

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What doesn't kill you makes 
you stronger, you know?

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All the bad cliches you can think of.

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There's been people that have come
from absolutely nothing to make it,

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and in society's eyes gained success.

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Nat Kendall-Taylor:
So just to make it really crystal-clear,

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that which you just heard
was not the intended effect

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when this expert opened
his or her mouth to deliver this message.

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I'm not trying to say
that our friend Nietzsche here

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with "what doesn't kill you 
makes you stronger" -

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smart audience, there you go -

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is wrong or stupid in any way.

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But there's clearly something
that's going on here,

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there's clearly a difference


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between the intention
and the delivery of the message,

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and it's actual perception and effect.

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And you all should have a good idea
as to what that is,

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based on how I introduced myself
as an anthropologist.

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So the thing that stands between
the you-say and the they-think here is ...

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culture.

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Not the external, Indiana Jones
artifact kind of culture,

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but rather culture in mind,

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culture as a set
of shared patterns of thinking,

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as a set of shared assumptions
and propositions that we have

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and carry around with us in our minds,

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and use every time
that we are presented with information,

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every time that we engage with an issue.

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And so, what this does,

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this realization that culture
is always mediating our meaning

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and complicating our job
as communicators, is it gives us -

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so this is both, kind of
one of these paradoxical things

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that's both utterly common sense,
and completely game-changing -

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is that this gives us
a really different way

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of looking at what has been

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the dominant way of thinking about
public understanding and communication.

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So for a long time,
and still too this day,

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people have thought
of public understanding in this way:

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as an empty receptacle,
as a blank slate, as an empty fishbowl,

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and have thought that we as communicators
can assume that we are our audiences,

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and take the things
that make so much sense to us,

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and literally drop them
into this unfettered space

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where they get to do their thing.

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And we know, based on
what I've just told you about culture,

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that this is neither correct,

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nor is it productive as a way
to think about communications.

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Instead,

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we have to understand that culture always
complicates our job as communicators,

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and if we can go a step further

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and understand how people use culture
to think about our issues,

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we can be dramatically more effective

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in our roles as messengers,
in our roles as communicators.

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And so, the second reason why framing
matters to all of you in this room

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is because understanding 
is frame dependent.

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Now, that's a mildly
academicese way of saying

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that the choices that you make
as communicators matter.

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Sometimes the little things:

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the pronouns that you use,
the verbs that you choose;

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sometimes the big things,

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the values that you use
to explain why your issue matters;

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those things matter.

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Those things have
frequently dramatic impacts

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on what people are willing to do,

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and how people are willing to act
and engage on your issues.

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And again, I don't want you
to take my word for it.

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I'm going to give you a quick example


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that shows you that understanding
is frame dependent.

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And this example comes
not from the United States,

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but from the Canadian province of Alberta.

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And a quick geography lesson,

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Alberta is one of the tall, skinny ones
in the middle of the country.

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Kind of all you need to know -
it's very cold - for this example.

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And so there's a group of experts 
and advocates in Alberta

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who are working to change 
policy and practice around addiction.

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They're working to take
what we know from science,

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and use it to implement better policies
and practices around addiction

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in this province.

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And they've been having
a great deal of difficulty doing this.

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A lot of their problem comes from the fact


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that there is zero support
to do anything different

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when it comes to addiction
in this province.

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And so, they came to us,
and they asked us to conduct some work

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to figure out how to engage
members of the public more productively,

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to move understanding,

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and specifically, to increase support
for a set of evidence-based policies.

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And so, as good framing geeks and dweebs,

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we do what good framing geeks
and dweebs do,

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we ran an experiment.

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And in this experiment
we tested three different values messages.

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You see, the values messages
along the horizontal axis of this graph

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right now.

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So some people -
this is a large experiment,

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6,000 people, which believe it or not
is not the entire population of Alberta,

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it's a representative sample,
not an exhaustive sample.

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Each of these 6,000 people is randomly
assigned to one of these messages.

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So if some folks got the value 
of interdependence,

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which, in this case, is the sense

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that we need to do a better job
of dealing with addiction in this province

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because we're all connected:

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what influences one of us
influences all of us.

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Other folks got this value of ingenuity,

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which is an innovation value, that we are
a province of problem-solvers -

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you kind of swing your arm
when you do this one -

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there's never been a problem
that we haven't been able to solve

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with some good old Albertan grit

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and roll-up-your-sleeves
problem-solvingness -

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that was my Albertan accent,
if you caught that, very important.

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And other folks, last but not least,
got this value of empathy,

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which is the sense that we need
to do a better job

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of dealing with addiction in this province

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because people who deal with
addiction are people too.

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They could be our mother, brother,
father, sister, neighbor, whomever,

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and as individuals, we need to show
these folks compassion.

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So what you're going to see
on this next click

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is what I think are three beautiful,
blue bars appearing on this screen,

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and what those blue bars
are going to show you

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is the extent, the degree
to which hearing these different values

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changes people's support
for these evidence-based policies.

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So can anyone do a good drumroll?

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Please, play along, thank you.

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(Drumroll)

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So you should see three blue bars
and notice two things.

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So first of all, two of these values,
interdependence and ingenuity,

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make people, to a statistically
significant degree,

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more supportive of these
evidence-based policies.

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That is good news
when we run these experiments,

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and when we get results like that,

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we stand up, we do
a little framing dance -

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I won't do it right now, don't worry -

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we sit back down and we look
towards the right-hand side of the screen.

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The value of empathy

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is actually depressing
people's support for these policies.

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Now, the kicker is
that in a subsequent piece of analysis,

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where we looked at all of the fields
external-facing materials,

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guess which value we found
to be in place over 90% of the time?

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Empathy.

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Thank you. Not a rhetorical question.

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And so, what this field has been doing
for a very long time is endorsing a value

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which actually drives support down


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for the very policies
that they are advocating.

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So this example does two things:

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it clearly shows you that understanding
is frame-dependent and frames matter.

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It also shows you that these questions,
you know, which values to use,

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how to communicate,
are empirical questions.

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We don't have to guess or use our guts,
we can use social science.

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I think it's pretty cool

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that frames are able to move people's
understanding and their policy support,

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but what about more intrinsic,
subconscious thinking?

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What about implicit bias?

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Can frames make people 
less subconsciously biased

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against particular groups of people?

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So we set out to answer this question
through a project on re-framing aging

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in which we were
specifically interested in:

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can frames make people less
implicitly biased against older adults?

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And we found two things.

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First of all, Americans do not
like older people.

00:13:20.937 --> 00:13:23.517
Older Americans don't like older people.

00:13:23.517 --> 00:13:24.796
(Laughter)

00:13:24.796 --> 00:13:26.436
High degree of implicit bias,

00:13:26.436 --> 00:13:28.006
and it's a level of implicit bias

00:13:28.006 --> 00:13:30.176
that parallels other biases
that people study,

00:13:30.176 --> 00:13:34.896
whether that's gender,
religion, sexuality, race;

00:13:34.896 --> 00:13:37.626
this is not cool news, not a good finding.

00:13:37.626 --> 00:13:40.066
But it does get cool
when you look at what happens

00:13:40.066 --> 00:13:42.056
when we gave people a message

00:13:42.056 --> 00:13:45.875
that compared ageing to a process
of building and gaining momentum.

00:13:45.875 --> 00:13:47.418
And when we did this,

00:13:47.418 --> 00:13:52.477
we found that we could actually reduce
people's implicit bias by almost a third.

00:13:52.477 --> 00:13:53.686
Through a frame,


00:13:53.686 --> 00:13:58.466
we could make people less ageist
at an implicit level.

00:13:58.466 --> 00:14:01.368
And you can tell
that I think this is pretty cool,

00:14:01.368 --> 00:14:04.066
and it's definitely evidence 
that frames matter,

00:14:04.066 --> 00:14:07.516
and it's definitely evidence
that understanding is frame dependent.

00:14:07.516 --> 00:14:12.727
So I want to leave you with a quote,
one of my new favorite quotes.

00:14:12.727 --> 00:14:15.667
This is from Austrian
philosopher Ivan Illich,

00:14:15.667 --> 00:14:18.327
and Illich says that neither
revolution nor reformation

00:14:18.327 --> 00:14:22.379
can ultimately change a society,
rather you must tell a more powerful tale,

00:14:22.379 --> 00:14:24.948
one so persuasive
that it sweeps away the old myths

00:14:24.948 --> 00:14:27.948
and becomes the preferred story.

00:14:27.948 --> 00:14:33.099
So if we're going to drive social change,
we need to develop, we need to test,

00:14:33.099 --> 00:14:36.727
and we need to commit to
telling new stories.

00:14:37.207 --> 00:14:41.987
And with that, I will thank you very much,
and encourage you all to frame on.

00:14:41.987 --> 00:14:45.038
(Applause)