Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’


by Nigel Stanley    
11:45 am - September 18th 2012

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The great danger with something as wide-ranging as the British Social Attitudes Survey is that people look for the results that confirm what they already think – what psychologists call confirmation bias.

We saw that in coverage, with some highlighting support for higher public spending but others leading on ‘tough’ attitudes on welfare and immigration.

The other temptation is to try to construct a coherent world view and describe this as ‘what the public think’.

The truth is much more complicated – because people are much more complicated than these approaches suggest. Few of the interesting questions in the survey have such overwhelming majorities that there are not a significant number of dissenters. We do not know whether the people on the majority side of questions tend to be the same people, or whether they are more randomly distributed between winning or losing arguments.

And as anyone who has sat through a focus group knows, most people do not have a coherent set of beliefs about the world and every policy issue. Most people don’t find the need to think deeply about issues that do not affect them directly and often have very imperfect knowledge. If they did follow issues in detail the precise wording of poll questions woud not matter so much.

One helpful concept is George Lakoff‘s theory of framing. He argues that people usually do not make decisions or strike attitudes purely through rational choices but by a more slippery process based on emotion, metaphor and language. Here’s a piece from the New York Times which explains this at a journalistic level. Lakoff argues that much of politics consists of competition between liberal and conservative frames (using these words in the US context, not as Clegg v Cameron).

Almost everyone uses a mix of these, although most people tend to use one more than the other. People in the centre are those therefore with the least fixed framing, rather than those who make the most rational choices.

I have observed people in focus-groups switch frames. One minute they echo conservative scrounger rhetoric, the next complain how tough it is for an unemployed relative to live on their benefits, but with the former completely influencing their political views.

But framing is still a very useful way to think about the British Social Attitudes Survey. I read its results therefore as a competition between progressive and conservative frames for the issues it covers. So we can see that conservatives have very successfully framed the welfare debate as about scroungers and abuse.

This chart tracks those who think unemployment benefits are too high less than those who think they are too low. (I’ve extrapolated data for two years when the question was not asked.) And don’t forget the real value of unemployment benefit has fallen considerably over the period covered by this graph.

The next graph (which comes from the BSAS website) however shows how unsuccessful conservatives have been in the UK in arguing for a smaller state.

The argument is between those arguing for more spending and those who say keep it the same – and there has been a slight shift in the progressive direction in the last year.

F_Welfare _1.1

I am not sure there are any flip conclusions from all of this for progresive campaigners. Shifting views on welfare is hard. Prejudice against claimants runs deep and is emotional. There are similar views on immigration (though wrong to see as racism, other than for a minority).

But while the government wants to frame all economic questions through the lens of deficit reduction, they are not succeeding.

Yet thinking about these attitudes in terms of frames can be helpful for campaigners. The challenge is always to get more people to view more issues through the progressive frame – and a good test for any action or argument is whether it helps achieve this.

—
a longer version of this post is at Touchstone blog

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About the author
Nigel Stanley is an occasional contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He is the TUC’s Head of Campaigns and Communications. He's also at the ToUCstone blog.
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Fight the cuts ,Westminster


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Reader comments


1. ex-Labour voter

“Then there was Philip Gould and his focus groups…but I used to laugh at how extraordinary the confluence was between his own views and what the (focus) groups seemed to be saying.”

Tony Blair, “A Journey” p298.

2. Mark Carrigan

The article reminded me of this talk by Prof Karen Rowlingson who has worked on the BSA in the past http://sociologicalimagination.org/archives/3669

3. Barrie J

Having in the past been involved in ‘polls’ – you can get whatever result the client wants.
Just frame the question.

4. Robert

Being disabled myself, I have without doubt seen a difference about the way people treat me. I was tipped out of my wheelchair by a lady who said to other people that most of these are cheats and scroungers, of course this was when we had labour spouting this and the BBC backing it up.

Then one day at home I was punched and left seriously hurt by a family who felt I was a scrounger who had been cheating later on we found out her son had been turned down for DLA.

I have also found that people are getting harder in their feelings towards immigrants, and to be honest we knew a long time ago in my area that people from Poland were getting council homes before local people, now confirmed by the council, who stated they were going to give homes to hard working people, then said if they had children.

Of course today those Polish people are out of work.

But without little doubt their has been a change to the feeling towards disabled people and not for the better.

And when you have politicians telling people about scroungers work shy, then you have Miliband telling a story about knocking on a door seeing a disabled person knowing he could do something, when asked what was wrong with him what was his disability.

No I think the public tend to believe politicians show you how mad we are.

5. Shatterface

Having in the past been involved in ‘polls’ – you can get whatever result the client wants.
Just frame the question.

There was a great scene on this in Yes, Minister when they discussed bringing back National Service using questions that framed the issue differently. It should be compulsary viewing.

That said, some of Lakoff’s suggestions are pretty odd: reframing taxes as ‘membership fees’, etc. You might as well take a leaf out of Montgomery Burns’s book and reframe a nuclear meltdown as an unscheduled fission surplus.

6. Richard Carey

Might it also be that not everyone fits into the manichean division between ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ (or ‘left’ and ‘right’ as it is usually put)?

7. Nigel Stanley

1) You can overdo the argument that by changing the wording you can get any answer you want. On issues where people do have worked out views and there are straightforward issues at stake question wording will make less difference than on issues where many know little and do not have strong views. One strength of the right is turning issues that progressive see as nuanced and complicated into simple tabloid headlines.

2) On my longer post at Touchstone I say that I find Drew Westen more helpful as a campaign guide as some of Lakoff’s approaches seem too US specific for me. But it was also remiss of me not to include a link to this piece by Lakoff about the UK on the Progress website.
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/09/12/all-in-the-mind-2/

8. Richard W

5. Shatterface

” There was a great scene on this in Yes, Minister when they discussed bringing back National Service using questions that framed the issue differently. It should be compulsary viewing. ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

9. Charlieman

@OP, Nigel Stanley: “And as anyone who has sat through a focus group knows…” Perhaps, but the British Social Attitudes Survey is about quantitative analysis.

“We do not know whether the people on the majority side of questions tend to be the same people, or whether they are more randomly distributed between winning or losing arguments.” In order to answer, therefore, you need similar data on which to run some cross tabs.

10. douglas clark

It may be of passing interest how this has gone down with some (me included!) in Scotland:

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/no-campaign-loses-the-argument/


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Mark Carrigan

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/JSJawYey This talk is useful re: BSA http://t.co/8ImQNdOY

  2. Jason Brickley

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/bmvdQH9F

  3. Graham Scambler

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/JSJawYey This talk is useful re: BSA http://t.co/8ImQNdOY

  4. leftlinks

    Liberal Conspiracy – Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/t9h1xIHK

  5. Liza Harding

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/JSJawYey This talk is useful re: BSA http://t.co/8ImQNdOY

  6. Tony

    Worth a readRT @libcon: Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different 'frames' http://t.co/2eN8BhVX

  7. BevR

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/qTPY0oOL via @libcon

  8. BevR

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/gwHmADYo

  9. Ermintrude

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/adH4pA1r via @libcon

  10. Public University

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/IJwxKA5L

  11. Brian

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/IJwxKA5L

  12. Pauline Franklin

    MT @public_uni British Social Attitudes Survey &different ‘frames’ http://t.co/tyuGzdEd Interesting 4new #SWstudents. UR attitudes?

  13. Jan Tallis

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/9xIOUZ1H via @libcon

  14. Socio Imagination

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/ajFytXPK

  15. T Andersson

    Reading the British Social Attitudes Survey through different ‘frames’ http://t.co/ajFytXPK





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