This article is republished from Cognitive Policy Works.
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 [...]

Today is the International Day for Biological Diversity, so attempts are being made to drum up public concern about biodiversity loss in time-honoured fashion – by asking: “how much is it worth?”
Well, the ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB) report for Business will be published in July, and – according to today’s Guardian – [...]

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 not [...]

Check out this video, published by Generation “WE”, as a candidate for being an identity campaign:
[Link to video]
Identity campaigning builds upon aspects of core identity to engage people around intrinsic motivations.  It challenges conventional ideas about rational action and self-interest.  And it calls upon people to become more empowered and engaged in personal transformations in [...]

Tom and I have written extensively about the benefits of developing advocacy campaigns around core identities and social values.  It is with great pleasure that I can announce the launch of my first identity campaign in Seattle.
Last fall, Alex Steffen of WorldChanging gave a series of presentations where he called for Seattle to be the [...]

This piece from Common Dreams provides a great and condensed overview of Lakoff’s political thought, and how it’s rooted in an understanding of neuroscience. It provides an account of why progressive political argument fails when it relies on logic and neglects the importance of emotion.

There’s a whiff of social engineering to identity campaigning, says Justin Rowlatt, BBC’s ‘ethical man’ on last night’s Analysis.
The piece opens with Soli from Futerra recounting her ‘magic wand’ experiment: she asked a group of environmentalists how many of them would magic away climate change if people were left unchanged after its disappearance. Apparently, precious [...]

In our book, Tom and I wrote about how people often use maladaptive coping mechanisms as a means of psychologically warding off the threats posed by environmental challenges.
We suggested (on page 49) that environmental organizations can approach this problematic aspect of identity by developing:
“approaches that help people express the fear, anger, sadness, angst, or sense [...]

Here’s Do The Green Thing’s spoof promotion for Nothing:

Pretty cool, eh? Do the Green Thing say:
Shopping is a buzz, an energy, but it uses energy too, all the energy needed to make all the things we shop for. So if you’ve got to shop but want to see the global temperature drop, buy the green [...]

Solitaire Townsend, Director of Futerra ‘Sustainability Communications’, writes:
The notion of changing the audience rather than the message is at the heart of the ‘identity campaigning’ concept led by WWF. Identity campaigning argues that we shouldn’t accept the basic psychology of our audience – but seek to change it.
This means re-programming people’s values away from consumption, [...]