Exploring the role and use of values & emotions in promoting prosocial action via Instagram

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Exploring the role and use of values &

emotions in promoting prosocial action via Instagram

Charlotte Griffiths

Communication for Development One-year master

15 credits Spring 2021

Supervisor: Erliza Lopez Pedersen

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Abstract

Inspired by recent work on value-based messaging in migration-related campaigning to elicit sympathy, this project explores theoretical rationale for employing values in the field of communication for social change (C4SC), understood in its broad sense as aspiring to engender prosocial behaviour.¹

The project is framed by the main question of how values, emotions and (prosocial) action relate to one another. Historic and more recent sociology theories related to values, emotions and action such as the Jamesian Theory of Action, Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, Schwartz’s Refined Theory of Values, Caprara et al’s Prosociality, inform my theoretical hypothesis that for an individual responding to a stimulus values are relatively stable frames which guide goal setting, whilst emotions perform a cognitive function of evaluation, combined they create the impetus for (prosocial) action, though do not guarantee the impetus will be acted upon.

Whether evidence that this hypothesis is enacted by traditional C4SC actors is the second endeavour of this project, for which a 42-text comparative analysis is performed to observe whether and how calls to action (CTA), values and emotions are present in existing prosocial campaigning. The texts are sourced from Instagram, the growing visual-first social media platform that offers comparable units and serves as symbolic representation of the actors’

communication.

The main finding of this analysis is that values and emotions are present across the range of themes and content producers. Whilst values associated with prosocial behaviour feature strongly across the board, values are present in a multitude of ways, sometimes in provocative or counter-intuitive ways within an individual text. This diversity is positive for the potential of individual texts to

1Prosocial behaviour: voluntary actions undertaken to benefit others, such as sharing, donating, caring, comforting and helping. As defined in Caprara, G.V., Alessandri, G., Eisenberg, N., (June 2012). Prosociality: The contribution of traits, values and self-efficacy beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 102 (6).

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engage a wider audience by reflecting the complexity of each person’s own value profile.

Being more subjective, the types of emotions elicited is less clear than values spoken to/challenged. Nonetheless the ways emotions are employed provide ample food for thought for researchers and practitioners, and there is credible proof that each text will evoke some form of emotional engagement, which answers to the criteria in the hypothesis for emotion-facilitated evaluation.

The findings on CTAs are informative, particularly when compared between the different C4SC actors studied; there is a tendency for global level campaigning to be more general and national and local level more specific, whilst governmental level demonstrates limited CTAs for social change, focusing on celebration of progress instead.

The findings on the three units of interest in this project demonstrate fertile ground for further research into the interplay between values, emotions and action, as well as demonstrating to practitioners that understanding the value profile of target audiences is a worthwhile step in campaign design, and to consider how a campaign might provoke certain emotional responses leading either to heightened engagement or risking emotional dissonance.

The project contributes to C4SC by testing a methodology for decoding CTAs, values and emotions, providing a baseline on how these units are used in current campaigning, and proposing various avenues of follow-up research, including connecting this work to intent and impact i.e. the extent to which the campaigns motivated prosocial action. It builds on the work that inspired me by defining why an emotional response is useful in prosocial campaigning and how this relates to values and action.

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Definitions of Motivational Types of Values in Terms of their Goals and the

Single Values that Represent Them 13

Figure 2: Revised theoretical model of relations among motivational types of values, higher order value types and bipolar value dimension 14 Figure 3: The 19 values in the Refined Theory, each defined in terms of its motivational

goal 15

Figure 4: Visualisation of the interplay between emotions and values 21

Figure 5: Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions (1980) 32

List of Tables & Charts

Table 1: Descriptive metadata table 32

Table 2: CTA by theme 34

Table 3: CTA by level 35

Chart 1: Presence of values by theme 38

Chart 2: Presence of values by producer level 39

Table 6: Emotions by theme 45

Table 7: Emotions by level 45

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Inspiration

I work as a Communications Officer for the International Centre for Migration Policy Development and have been exposed to many discussions within the organisation and my wider network on ‘how to communicate migration’. Many of these discussions reflect on media coverage of the so-called ‘Refugee crisis’ in 2015 which provoked strong reactions across Europe and beyond.

Six years later immigration remains a polarising global issue despite migration flows themselves being comparable for centuries. Within the migration ‘industry’

calls to depolarise attitudes through value-based communication on migration come from international organisations, EU institutions, journalists and communication practitioners alike.² Yet there is no clear cut understanding of what this means or how to practice it. Nor is there much discussion on the potential for values beyond migration-communication amongst my peers - but this is the nature of practitioners being focused on one topic.

Several publications in late 2020 began to apply Schwartz’s framework of 10 human values to attitudes on migration with Dennison’s analysis of pro- and anti-migration campaigns leading to practical reflections on how to effectively employ value-based communication in campaigns to shift opinions of immigration, particularly among the ‘moderate middle’.³ Dennison posits that value-based communication has potential to be applied to other politically divisive subjects beyond migration, providing motivation to explore values for the wider field of communication for social change (C4SC).

According to Dennison, there exists a theoretical justification that communicating according to values can influence groups:

3Dennison, J., (15 December 2020). A basic human values approach to migration policy communication. Data & Policy , Volume 2 , 2020 , e18

2See review of communication guides by Dennison, J., (15 December 2020). A basic human values approach to migration policy communication. Data & Policy , Volume 2 , 2020 , e18

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“messaging with a value-basis that is concordant with that of its audience is more likely to elicit sympathy, whereas that which is discordant with the values of its audience is more likely to elicit antipathy.”⁴

Whilst I respect this argument and associated data, I find that Dennison stops short of fully demonstrating the practicable worth of his point and see an opportunity to expand on his work with a bigger-picture perspective that motivates me to remove my ‘migration hat’ and approach Dennison’s work wearing my ‘ComDev hat’ to explore how this theory operates in other settings.

Aim

Despite providing a framework for analysing values in communication materials and applying it to pro/anti-migration campaigns, Dennison explores neither the significance of engendering sympathy, nor the causal effects of stimulating it.

Eliciting an emotional, sympathetic response is presented as the goal of a communication campaign, with no further discussion of why sympathy is a desirable response for a communication to strive to provoke. My aim, therefore, in order to justify calling on practitioners to employ value-based communication on migration or other socially divisive issues, is to establish the theoretical relationship between values and sympathy (or emotions more generally) and build on Dennison’s proposal by questioning if there is a subsequent link to individual and collective action.

Research questions

In order to achieve this aim and contribute an expanded framework and evidence baseline to the study of C4SC, my project’s literature review, theoretical framework and analysis of communication campaigns are framed by the research questions:

● How do values, emotions and actions relate to one another, and how is this relevant in communication for social change?

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● How are values and emotions currently employed in social change/prosocial communication?

Relevance

This study contributes to existing literature on C4SC by expanding Dennison’s model of value based communication driving sympathy to establish a theoretical connection between values, emotions and action to generate a more comprehensive framework for research and implementation. Furthermore, taking Dennison’s suggestion that values can be employed effectively in communication on divisive topics, I use this expanded theoretical framework to assess publicly available campaigns on several topics relevant to C4SC.

Herein, I refer to C4SC in its broad sense of using communication strategically to address and challenge structural conditions that inform social change by communication for pro-social purposes.⁵ The themes addressed in the analysis chapter are examples of topical social change issues within which there are

‘prosocial’ objectives. The analysis findings may therefore be applied to other social change issues, and communication initiatives with prosocial aims, whereby prosocial behaviour refers to “voluntary actions undertaken to beneﬁt others, such as sharing, donating, caring, comforting, and helping”⁶ and can therefore be understood to be actions that contribute to positive social change based on a normative stance on social equality and justice.

Given the afore-mentioned enthusiasm for value-based communication but lack of common approach from social change actors, analysing how this theoretical relationship is already at work in existing communication initiatives run by different ‘levels’ of campaigner provides a baseline reference from which practitioners and academics in the fields of C4SC and Communication for Development can learn and improve on how values, emotions and action coexist according to topic and level to encourage prosociality.

6Caprara, G.V., Alessandri, G., Eisenberg, N., (June 2012). Prosociality: The contribution of traits, values and self-efficacy beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 102 (6).

5Tufte, T., (2017). Communication and social change: a citizen perspective. Polity: Cambridge.

pp.14-15

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Chapter 2: Literature review

This chapter constitutes a literature review of the concepts of value and emotion, and existing frameworks, with a view to establishing their interconnectedness and relevance for stimulating action.

Value

Value is central to many disciplines that study human behaviour, from philosophy, psychology, and sociology, economics and neuroscience.

Succinctly, the concept of ‘value’ reflects the importance that something holds for a person; what doesn't have any value is of no interest.⁷ Since Plato, academics have sought to understand what value is, and its origins and there is a plethora of overlapping, complementary and divergent discussion in the fields mentioned above.

Because my intention is to identify values in communication campaigns, it is necessary to select an appropriate framework of values applicable in communication for social change - the connection between which will be discussed later in this chapter. Here follows a brief presentation and reflection on the suitability of Rokeach, Inglehart, Hofstede, and Schwartz. These theorists are still active, revising and applying their respective concepts. Whilst they each reference the others, it is selective, either to reinforce their own work by way of demonstrating correlation, or superiority in some sense. There is limited work that empirically compares the theories.⁸ Therefore, whilst for this project, it is suitable to select one framework, future work could benefit from combining or comparing multiple value frameworks.

First, Rokeach (1967, 1973) defined a value as “an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of

8Datler, J., Jagodzinski, W., Schmidt, P., (2013). Two theories on the test bench: Internal and external validity of the theories of Ronald Inglehart and Shalom Schwartz. Social Science Research. Vol 42 (3) pp 906-925

7Brosch, T., Sander, D., (24 July 2013) Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying value-based decision-making: from core values to economic value. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Vol.7.

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existence.”⁹ For him, values relate to each other and can be applied individually and socially. The Rokeach Value Survey entails participants rank two lists of 18 values in terms of importance: ‘terminal values’ (desirable states of existence including peace, equality, national security, pleasure), and ‘instrumental values’

(ways of behaving and achieving terminal values - adjectives such as ambitious, honest, imaginative). Whilst empirical data demonstrated validity of the framing, and Rokeach argued how to categorise political persuasions with value priorities (which can be relevant in C4SC), the somewhat abstract, high-register nature of some of the values, make it challenging to apply in an objective manner. Though not a criticism of the survey itself, it makes it difficult to use for objective analysis of communication materials. Moreover, Rokeach is criticised for his selection of values not being theory-based.¹⁰¹¹

The 1980 Hofstede four-dimensional value structure to compare national cultures - plus the fifth dimension of Confucian Work Dynamism added in 1991¹² - was developed using data from IBM and subsidiaries in 71 countries.¹³ The resulting framework used the data to compare national value profiles based on (a) power distance, (b) uncertainty avoidance, (c) individualism, (d) masculinity.

However, Hofstede’s value dimensions do not lend themselves to analysis at individual level, which is vital for this project’s exploration of the role of values in rousing action. Furthermore, the original dataset and resulting framework was generated with an emphasis on work-related values to investigate the relationship between national values and economic profile, making it less immediately useful in this hypothesis.

13McCrae R.R., Hofstede G., (2004) Personality and Culture Revisited: Linked Dimensions and Traits of Culture. Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 38 (1). pp. 61

12Hofstede G., Minkov M., (2012) Hofstede’s Fifth Dimension: New Evidence From the World Values Survey. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 43(1) 3–14. pp.4

11 Gibbins, K., Walker, I., (1993). Multiple Interpretations of the Rokeach Value Survey. Journal of Social Psychology. 133 (6): 797–805.

10Schwartz S., (2003). A Proposal for Measuring Value Orientations across Nations. Chapter 7 in the Questionnaire Development Package of the European Social Survey. (accessed March 2021) pp.265

9Warner S., (1976) Review: The Nature of Human Values. by Milton Rokeach. Contemporary Sociology Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), pp. 13-16

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Inglehart relates values to human needs.¹⁴His 1977 Postmaterialism Index was developed from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and includes 4-12 items (e.g.

maintaining order in the nation; protecting freedom of speech) for respondents’

national priorities and policy preferences; subsequently it was expanded with indicators to account for different cultural traditions: the secular-traditional and self-expression-survival scales.¹⁵ Inglehart’s theory serves as the basis of the World Values Survey,¹⁶rendering it a potential framework in C4SC research and practice because of the data available. However, rather than assessing more deep-seated personal values which might be used to predict political/policy leanings, Inglehart’s model infers individual values from political preferences, making it impossible to use the index as a framework to explore value-based communication. Moreover, Inglehart’s model has been criticised for the added dimensions being inductive generalizations from empirical findings rather than theoretically derived concepts.¹⁷Although Inglehart’s attempt to address the role of cultural differences falls short, it is an important element in any attempt to measure and analyse value orientations.

We turn to Schwartz’s 10 value orientations, as mentioned in the introduction.

Schwartz presents six characteristics of values that he determines are ‘implicit’

in the writings of theorists and researchers, including the three cited above, thereby providing a consensus on the concept of values, if not a single framework to delineate them. I insert an abbreviated version of this list as it is the keystone of why the theoretical framework is designed around the potential of values in communication for social change - in particular points 4 and 6. Point 1 directly connects value to ‘feeling’ which is relevant to the next subsection on emotion.

16https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp(accessed 17 March 2021)

15Lakatos, Z., (2015) citing Inglehart (1997, 2000) in Traditional Values and the Inglehart Constructs. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol.79 (S1)pp. 291–324

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Six characteristics of the nature of values [for expanded explanation of each characteristic, see the original text]:¹⁸

1. Values are beliefs, cognitive structures that are closely linked to affect.

2. Values refer to desirable goals

3. Values transcend specific actions and situations

4. Values serve as standards or criteria that guide evaluation of actions, policies, people, events and decision making on whether they facilitate or undermine the attainment of cherished values.

5. Values are ordered by importance relative to one another. The ordered set of values forms a system of value priorities. Cultures and individuals can be characterised by their systems of value priorities.

6. The relative importance of the set of relevant values guides action.

Any attitude or behavior typically has implications for multiple values.

Each value contributes to action as a function both of its relevance to the action—and hence the likelihood of its activation—and of its importance to the actor.

Schwartz follows his predecessors in seeing “values as desirable, transsituational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. The crucial content aspect that distinguishes among values is the type of motivational goal they express.”¹⁹Values are ‘core’ to the individual, and separate from the less stable concept of ‘attitudes’. His 1992 framework was developed as a comprehensive set of basic values that are recognised coherently in all societies and so can help to explain individual decision making, attitudes, and behavior.”²⁰ Figure 1 shows the ten values, with examples of the associated motivational goals.

20 Schwartz, S. H., Cieciuch, J., Vecchione, M., Davidov, E., Fischer, R., Beierlein, C., Konty, M.

(2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4), 663-688

19Schwartz S., (2003). A Proposal for Measuring Value Orientations across Nations. Chapter 7 in the Questionnaire Development Package of the European Social Survey. (accessed March 2021)

18Schwartz S., (2003). A Proposal for Measuring Value Orientations across Nations. Chapter 7 in the Questionnaire Development Package of the European Social Survey. (accessed March 2021) pp.262

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Figure 1: Definitions of Motivational Types of Values in Terms of their Goals and the Single Values that Represent Them

Source: Schwartz S., (2003). A Proposal for Measuring Value Orientations across Nations Chapter 7 in the Questionnaire Development Package of the European Social Survey.

(accessed March 2021) pp.262.

As well as the 10 core values, Schwartz proposed four ‘higher-order’ values, in oppositional pairs. First, self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement, with self-transcendence values closely associated with prosocial tendencies.²¹ Second, conservation vs. openness to change. Rather than establishing a hierarchy, he arranged the 10 values according to commonality and in correlation to the higher-order values, creating a values circumplex upon which conflict and congruence of values can be visualised, (Figure 2).

Consistent findings during empirical testing using multidimensional scaling prove its universal application and partially account for the popularity of

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Schwartz’s value framework,²²²³ and my choice to use it for this project. The empirical multinational research by Schwartz and colleagues showed that individual motivational values are structured in similar ways across culturally diverse groups, thus suggesting a universally applicable organisation of motivations. The universality is theoretically demonstrated as the ten values are grounded in three requirements of the human condition without which the individual cannot thrive: “needs of individuals as biological organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and survival and welfare needs of groups.”²⁴ The theoretical and data-based proof of the universal applicability of a motivation-oriented value framework makes it highly relevant in C4SC which operates from local to global level.

Figure 2: Revised theoretical model of relations among motivational types of values, higher order value types and bipolar value dimension.

Source: Schwartz (1992 p.45) in Dennison, J., (15 December 2020). A basic human values approach to migration policy communication. Data & Policy , Vol.2.

24Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). pp.4

22Talevich, J.R., et al (2017) Toward a comprehensive taxonomy of human motives. PLoS ONE 12(2)

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Nevertheless, whilst the nature and structure of values may be universal,

“individuals and groups differ substantially in the relative importance they attribute to the values. That is, individuals and groups have different value

‘priorities’ or ‘hierarchies.’”²⁵ This offers additional avenues for study and campaign design, though in this project I focus on the importance of value communication in motivating individuals.

Just as Hofstede and Inglehart revised their frameworks, so has Schwartz. In 2012, Schwartz and collaborators proposed a refined version, subdividing the broader of the original values to create 19 distinct goals (Figure 3).²⁶ In suggesting more granular values on power, nature and resources, the refined theory is more attuned to C4SC discourse today. This expanded version will therefore provide the basis for analysis of the texts, unlike Dennison who used the original model when using data from the European Social Survey to compare value profiles to attitudes to migration.²⁷

Figure 3: The 19 values in the Refined Theory, each defined in terms of its motivational goal

26Schwartz, S. H., Cieciuch, J., Vecchione, M., Davidov, E., Fischer, R., Beierlein, C., Konty, M.

(2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4), 663-688

25Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). pp.3

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Source: Schwartz, S. H., et al. (2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4).

Emotions

In Dennison’s work on value-based communication in migration campaigns he makes eliciting ‘sympathy’ the objective in value-based campaigns, however, sympathy, is undefined and unexplored. Etymologically, sympathy comes from the Greek sym, meaning ‘together’, and pathos, ‘feelings or emotion’; it is used to mean sharing the emotions of another.²⁸ In some cases, eliciting sympathy may be the end objective of a communication, but can sharing emotions play a bigger role in engendering prosocial behaviour and action? In this section, I explore theory on emotions broadly, and sympathy specifically in order to understand the potential impact of (value-based) communication evoking an emotional response and, possibly, generating sympathy.

Since at least Aristotle's Rhetoric II, emotions have been discussed as an element of judgement and decision-making.²⁹ Foremost, emotions have been the realm of philosophers and psychologists. However, fascinating crossover research is present in law, economics and sociology, amongst others. It would be remiss to discuss the genesis and proliferation of the subject without mentioning William James and Sigmund Freud who radically altered the understanding of the human mind.³⁰ However, for the purpose of this project, I shall mainly concentrate on more recent constructivist work on emotions, mostly from the field of sociology, which challenges the modern duality of emotions vs.

rationality/reason,³¹instead promoting the evaluative function of emotions.

Barbalet is a prominent voice whose work is pertinent. He places emotions as a facilitator of understanding, reason and action; seeing them as a social cause, rather than effect.³² In particular, he contradicts what he sees as a conventional

32 Hewitt, J.P.,(Jan 1999) reviewing Barbalet, J.M., "Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach,"Contemporary Sociology; Washington Vol. 28 (1)

31Rebughini, P., Scribano, A., (2018). Embodied emotions between constructivism and

ontologism: a reflection from the sociology of Alberto Melucci. Social Science Information 2018, Vol. 57(4). pp.646

30Deigh, J.,. (2008). Emotions, value and the law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.3

29https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/(accessed 06.03.21)

28https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sympathy-empathy-difference (accessed 06.03.21)

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opposition between emotion and reason, positing that “all actions, and indeed reason itself, require appropriate facilitating emotions if successful actions or reason at all are to be achieved.”³³He derides the sociology tradition of viewing impulses and emotions as distractions from value-directed purpose and action, arguing that no action occurs in a society without emotional engagement at individual level, being the smallest ‘unit’ of society.³⁴ This view is shared by other sociologists, and the conceptual framework established in the following chapter.

One insightful way Barbalet frames emotions is in contrast to Rational choice theory. He sees emotion as a necessary link between social structure and social actor, demonstrating that emotional engagement solves the problem of reliance on rational ‘expedient calculator’ for which we rarely - if ever - have the information or timeframe: “Emotions provide an instant evaluation of circumstance, they also influence the disposition of the person for a response to those circumstances. It is for these reasons that it is possible to say that emotions link structure and agency.”³⁵This connection underpins the function of emotions presented in the theoretical framework, but is also important independently given the significance of both structure and agency in society and processes of change. If we agree with Barbalet, then emotion is intrinsic to agency, one of the pillars of many communication for social change (or development) initiatives, philosophically and practically.

Tappolet defines emotions as ‘perceptions’, “malleable systems that help open us to the evaluative features of the world;”³⁶ Ahmed, as operating for the determination of the relation between signs.³⁷ Similarly, Nussbaum and Burkitt identify emotions as necessary to the act of receiving and processing

37 Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion: Vol. Second edition. Edinburgh University Press. pp.194

36Kurth C., Crosby H., Basse J., (2018). Are emotions perceptions of value (and why this matters)? A review essay of Christine Tappolet’s Emotions, Values, and Agency. Philosophical Psychology, 2018 Vol. 31 (4) 483–499. Pp 485

35Barbalet, J., (2002) Introduction: Why emotions are crucial. Sociological Review. Vol. 50 (S2) pp.2

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information to enable evaluation.³⁸ Moreover, Burkitt, like Barbalet, relates emotions to power structures, simultaneously acknowledging Freud’s characterisation of emotions as intense, ambivalent and closely connected with one another, but cautions that emotions for “incitement, inducement and seduction cannot be gauged precisely for everyone enmeshed in the networks of power relations”.³⁹The growing body of work on emotion as a perceptive lens through which the individual is able to evaluate information is a constructivist approach that centres emotions in individual thinking and movement to action.

Herein, Melucci’s work on social movement theory is also relevant, as the

‘emotional body’ is the terminal of social transformations.⁴⁰ This recognition of the role of emotions from individual thought to action in the perspective of social movements is particularly promising in C4SC initiatives. In striving to motivate such movements an emotional response might prove an interesting metric to evaluate in communication-based initiatives, as well as being an element to preemptively consider in the design of social change/development project design.

Sympathy

Sympathy is “(an expression of) understanding and care for someone else’s suffering.”⁴¹ Ergo, experiencing sympathy may be seen as an action in itself, especially if the ‘expression’ comes in the form of action to alleviate suffering.

Indeed, there is a body of work linking sympathy (and empathy) to ‘prosocial behaviour’.⁴²⁴³ To this project, Clark’s comprehensive and nuanced reflections are therefore pertinent and a more modern exploration of emotions’ functions, beginning with the idea that sympathy is a systematic ‘connecting emotion’ that

43Jolliffe, D., Farrington, D. P. (August 2006). Development and validation of the basic empathy scale. Journal of Adolescence. Vol 29 (4) Pp. 589-611 29

42Eisenberg (1989, 1990), Fabes (1990) as referenced in Park, Y., Hyun, H., Jhang, J., (7 February 2019) Do Emotional Laborers Help the Needy More or Less? The Mediating Role of Sympathy in the Effect of Emotional Dissonance on Prosocial Behavior. Frontiers in Psychology

41https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/sympathy(accessed 22.03.21)

40 Rebughini, P., Scribano, A., (2018). Embodied emotions between constructivism and

ontologism: a reflection from the sociology of Alberto Melucci. Social Science Information 2018, Vol. 57(4). pp.648

39Burkitt I., (2005) Powerful Emotions: Power, Government and Opposition in the ‘War on Terror’. Sociology Volume 39(4): 679–695. pp.684

38Burkitt I., (2005) Powerful Emotions: Power, Government and Opposition in the ‘War on Terror’. Sociology Volume 39(4): 679–695. pp.682-4

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bonds people, particularly in times of trouble.⁴⁴ Based on Clark’s research,

“sympathy plays a part in constructing the larger social order, giving shape and substance to interaction, relationships, and social bonds.”⁴⁵ This understanding of sympathy as intrinsic to social interaction and a driver of prosocial behaviour could justify Dennison positioning sympathy as the objective of value-based messaging. However, Clark is careful to point out the transactional nature of sympathy, its potential to underline differences and its unruliness, all of which make sympathy as an emotional end-goal an objective to treat with caution.

Similarly, Eisenberg highlights the subjectivity of sympathetic response leading to altruistic action, first in terms of ‘emotional arousability’, and second the capacity to process the experience into sympathy as opposed to personal distress, both of which may be biologically and/or socially influenced.⁴⁶ Furthermore, studies on compassion - and sympathy - fatigue suggest that whilst emotional engagement has potential for prosocial action, it also risks emotional dissonance that lowers the likelihood of responsive action.⁴⁷

It is for these reasons that I stress the interplay between values and emotions in guiding action in the following chapter. Moving beyond sympathy as an objective because of its fallibility, I promote the evaluative response of stimulating emotions as a more achievable and constructive goal for communications aspiring to encourage prosocial behaviour. This framing also enables an analysis by emotion that is less problematic in terms of the subjectivity of sympathetic response and feasible within the scope of this project.

47Park, Y., Hyun, H., Jhang, J., (7 February 2019) Do Emotional Laborers Help the Needy More or Less? The Mediating Role of Sympathy in the Effect of Emotional Dissonance on Prosocial Behavior. Frontiers in Psychology. Vol 10.

46Eisenberg, N., (1991). Values, Sympathy, and Individual Differences: Toward a Pluralism of Factors Influencing Altruism and Empathy. Psychological Inquiry. Vol.2 (2). pp.130

45Clark, C., (1998). Misery and Company : Sympathy in Everyday Life: Vol. [Pbk. ed., 1998].

University of Chicago Press. pp 6

44Clark, C., (1998). Misery and Company : Sympathy in Everyday Life: Vol. [Pbk. ed., 1998].

University of Chicago Press. pp 5

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Chapter 3: Theoretical framework

I aim for this project to contribute to C4SC in its broad sense as communication for pro-sociality, inspired by Dennison’s hope for value-based communication to be applied across the gamut of social issues. Based on the above exploration of emotions as connected to values and evaluative processes that lead to action, it is important to factor in emotions and values in parallel. In this section, I attempt to respond to Tufte’s observation that C4SC “is a field informed by values, ideologies, power struggles and agendas that are often difficult to identify, being more implicit than explicit”,⁴⁸ by making clear the interplay of values and emotions and their connection to individual, prosocial action, in order to rationalise the potential of employing them in C4SC.⁴⁹

Through the literature review I have established the fundamental characteristics of the core units of enquiry and how they interrelate: Values are deemed stable motivational goals that serve as guiding principles and are intrinsic to the cognitive process of decision making. Emotions are equally central - although less temporally stable - and facilitate a simultaneously cognitive and affective process of interpretation and evaluation of a given situation or stimulus. Neither concept operates in a vacuum, nor are they sequential. In fact, one might consider them to be symbiotic: an individual’s value profile providing relatively stable motivation-based orientations that guide response to stimuli, including action and inaction. Emotional engagement is a comparatively fleeting (but recurring) experience that draws on memory, feeling and values to evaluate a stimulus/situation, enabling an individual to decide on a course of action. The strength of an emotional reaction may sometimes catalyse an individual (or collective) to action, but, equally, paralyse due to emotional dissonance or inability to process.

The interoperational nature of the core units can be understood via the following illustration (not including external factors).

49Note: The theoretical framework focuses on the core units (values, emotion, prosocial action) of the dissertation project and does not enter into social media theories as the use of Instagram for this project is as a resource for campaign materials, rather than a unit of analysis itself.

pp.143

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Figure 4: Visualisation of the interplay between emotions and values

Source: Created by the author

Independently and combined, the values and emotions create impetus for action, the essential building block in social change. This proposal is informed by Caprara, Alessandri and Eisenberg’s work demonstrating how personal traits, values and empathy increase prosocial behaviour,⁵⁰ and the Jamesian Theory of Action which embeds emotion in goal setting and making individual choices to act and contribute to social outcomes.⁵¹Based on the combination of research reviewed, I proceed on the basis that for goal-setting defining a response, values are relatively stable frames, whilst emotions facilitate understanding and provide impetus to evaluate a stimulus in relation to values and other factors. Nevertheless, I agree with James that emotions can also set goals directly, which doubles the rationale for including them in a C4SC process, in addition to their evaluative function. Indeed, in terms of social movements, emotions may be conceived as catalytic to accelerate action, as inferred in Burkitt’s work on protests reacting to the 9/11 terror attacks.⁵² I assume that on some level, values still provide an individual’s framing, but the strength and immediacy of an emotional response affects the depth of evaluation.

In brief, I consider that values are the frame of motivational goals which guide choices processed ‘in the moment’ by being emotionally stimulated, explaining

52Burkitt I., (2005) Powerful Emotions: Power, Government and Opposition in the ‘War on Terror’. Sociology Volume 39(4). pp.682-4

51See Barbalet, J., (1997) The Jamesian Theory of Action. Sociological Review. pp.104-107

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why those aspiring to drive social change need to incorporate both elements in their initiatives.

This connection between emotion and value is similarly present in Vilichez’ work connecting knowledge constructivism to personal beliefs (i.e. values) and social rationality: “Rationality and emotionality are not the fundamentals that make humans change the world. The motive that encourages us to transform the world is our moral beliefs (in the form of either philosophical or religious principles).”⁵³ The emphasis on emotion as producer and conduit of knowledge to social action is interesting here, linked as it is to individual belief/value. It is clear that value and emotion do not operate in isolation, so any hope to employ one necessitates respect of the influence of the other in cognition and action.

The idea that emotions performing an evaluative function are informed by values and can lead to action is also acknowledged by Tappolet for whom “the relationship between emotions and moral responsibility is mediated by values.

[...] emotions are perceptions of values, they can be considered to be perceptions of practical reasons, so that on certain conditions, acting on the basis of one’s emotions can consist in responding to one’s reasons.”⁵⁴

The literature referenced demonstrates that there is a significant cohort of sociology scholars who explicitly and implicitly see emotions and values as essential to orientate and propel an individual in decision making, leading to action - or inaction. Empirical evidence substantiates these theoretical analyses and more recent exploration of values in neuroscience, including neuroimaging studies, further reinforces the argument that values guide actions and decisions.⁵⁵ This gives this project a solid theoretical basis to work from, establishing that speaking to values and emotions has the potential to mobilise an individual to action.

55Brosch, T., Sander, D., (24 July 2013) Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying value-based decision-making: from core values to economic value. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Vol.7.

54Tappolet C., (2016) Emotions, Values and Agency. Oxford Scholarship Online.

53Vilchez, J.J., (2018) Mental Footnotes. Knowledge Constructivism From Logical Thinking and Personal Beliefs to Social Rationality and Spiritual Freedom. Psychological Exploration

57:2343–2361

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Whilst the ‘prosocial’ piece of the puzzle is mentioned above in Caprara et al, James and Vilchez, Bandura’s longterm building of Social Cognitive Theory is also relevant to include, given its very recent application in 2020 to youth movements for climate. Bandura identifies goal commitment, outcome expectations rooted in one’s values, expectations (material, social and self-evaluative) and expected outcomes (based on experience of one’s actions and modelled behaviour) as the four features of agency.⁵⁶ Again we see values embedded in agency to act, as well as an evaluation phase drawing on past experience, analogous to the emotion cognition of other theorists presented.

Social modeling is particularly relevant to this project, as the prosocial actors analysed can be considered as models.

Moreover, Bandura has extended his Social Cognitive Theory over the years to address global social issues through agentic development, mirroring the C4SC remit. Herein he presents three components: “the theoretical model [...] the determinants of psychosocial change and the mechanisms through which those determinants produce their effects. The second component is a translational and implemental model. It converts theoretical principles into an innovative operational model. It specifies the content, strategies of change, and their mode of implementation [...] The third component is a social diffusion model for adopting psychosocial programs to diverse cultural milieus.”⁵⁷ I suggest this large-scale model is where we must consider the role of traditional social change actors (organisations, institutions etc, not individuals): How they act to build theoretical models, propose implementable initiatives and diffuse these to individuals and communities in ways that empower their agency to act as individuals.

In summary, values and emotions are essential in responding to stimulus as they facilitate understanding, orienting response and action for social outcomes.

This provides the theoretical answer to the research question on how values,

57Bandura, A., (2018). Towards a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science. Vol 13 (2). pp.135

56Bandura, A., Lynne, C., (October 2020). Enlisting the power of youth for climate change.

American Psychologist. Vol.75 (7).

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emotions and action relate to each other. It is also why values and emotions can be considered important for C4SC, because they motivate and guide individual actions that are specifically prosocial and collectively lead to societal change.

Moreover, the role of social change actors can be considered in promoting prosocial values, leading operationalisation and disseminating according to cultural milieu. Proceeding on this basis I analyse whether and how communication for social change actors already employ values and emotions in their endeavours to drive prosocial behaviour.

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Chapter 4: Methodology

This chapter presents the methodology used in order to establish whether and how C4SC actors employ values and/or emotions in promoting prosocial action.

I present text selection methodology, rationalise the choice of social media, and introduce the themes and producers types of the texts to be analysed via textual analysis (image & text) using value and emotion frameworks.

Text selection

Selecting texts for consideration calls for balance between representativeness for wider C4SC use, versus variation on the elements for analysis. As I am investigating whether there is evidence of social change actors employing values and emotions to promote prosocial action among the public, I narrow the focus ﬁrst to communication campaigns, and second to one publicly-accessible platform, Instagram. I take a diverse case approach, as set out by Seawright and Gerring,⁵⁸ permitting qualitative assessment of multiple variables (call to action, value, emotion) within the substantive categories of interest (theme, level) that will facilitate analysis of relevance to C4SC academics and practitioners. To create a representative sample, I select 2-3 texts per theme, per level. This generates a collection of 42 texts⁵⁹ across the themes and levels explained below.

Social media: Instagram

In this digital age there is nothing more visible than an organisation’s social media to symbolise how it communicates, which makes Instagram a useful resource for prosocial communication analysis, as well as a practical one by being open access and comparable to the campaigns analysed by Dennison.

Bandura, whose social cognitive theory supports my theoretical framework, frames social media as having an important role in social modelling (one of the units of agency to act), noting that communication technology advances expand

59Some examples of texts are included in this document. A full list of hyperlinks is in Appendix 1

58Gerring, J., Seawright, J., (2008). Case selection techniques in case study research. Political Research Quarterly, 61(2). pp.300-301

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opportunities for individual and collective agency whilst also offering social modeling with “tremendous reach, speed, and instructive power.”⁶⁰

In recent years there has been some interesting work to ascertain links between prosocial behaviour and social media, for example exploring whether users demonstrating Conspicuous Donation Behaviour on Facebook do so as part of self-image concerns or because of altruistic tendencies also present offline.⁶¹ More recently, whether and how self-presentation online impacts offline behaviour, a so-called ‘extended warming effect’ of social media by which

“saliency (cognition) of online audiences in offline encounters triggers impression management behavior in the pursuit of a more desirable online public image” - an effect found to be stronger for more active social media users.⁶² Such research is fascinating in interrogating online-offline impact of social media, but it focuses on the output, over the input. Prosocial behaviours are present in social media, for both altruistic and self-promotional reasons, but if the theoretical framework is to serve as a guide on how individual action can be driven, how do values and emotions currently fit in the (pro)social media world?

To answer this, Instagram is the chosen platform firstly because it facilitates comparison as texts follow the same structure: visual/image + caption. This is also closely comparable to the inspiration of Dennison’s migration campaign analysis, most of which were poster-style (image + text). Although image + text campaigns can be found on other major platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, the image-first mentality of Instagram ensures a higher consistency of format. Secondly, Instagram is the second most-used social media platform globally, reaching over 1 billion followers at the end of 2020 and growing

62Lavertu, L., Marder, B., Erz, A., Angell, R., (September 2020). The extended warming effect of social media: Examining whether the cognition of online audiences offline drives prosocial behavior in ‘real life’. Computers in Human Behavior. Vol.110.

61Wallace, E., Buil, I., de Chernatony, L., (14 November 2017) When does “liking” a charity lead to donation behaviour? Exploring conspicuous donation behaviour on social media platforms.

European Journal of Marketing.

60Bandura, A., (2018). Towards a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science. Vol 13 (2). pp.134

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steadily.⁶³ The platform also has a significantly higher engagement rate across industries (0.98% median, compared to Facebook’s 0.08% and Twitter’s 0.045%), with the non-profit sector seeing the fourth highest engagement (1.41%).⁶⁴ Increasing market dominance and comparatively high engagement marks Instagram as a platform of relevance for all communicators. In addition, the global health pandemic, Covid-19, has meant an increase in time spent online; Instagram saw an increase of 43% of monthly visits from 2019-2020, exceeded only by the market new-comer TikTok.⁶⁵ Instagram is therefore strategically important as a campaigning tool.

Categories

To learn the most about how values, emotions and actions are currently being used to promote prosocial behaviour, I establish two categories for analysis.

The first is theme: four high profile social change topics from 2020-2021 with ongoing conversations in the public sphere:

1. Gender based violence (GBV) (11 texts) 2. Gender equality (10)

3. Anti-racism (11) 4. LGBTQI+ rights (10)

The second category is ‘level’ (or type) of campaign producer, allowing me to assess whether the prevalence of values and emotions differs according to the following levels, each of which is identified by Tufte⁶⁶ as an actor in social change movements:

1. Global (UN agency) (12 texts) 2. Governmental (UK government) (8)

pp.15

65Molla, R., (1 March 2021) Posting less, posting more, and tired of it all: How the pandemic has changed social media. Vox

https://www.vox.com/recode/22295131/social-media-use-pandemic-covid-19-instagram-tiktok

64Kandey, A., (11 March 2021). 2021 Social Media Benchmarks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

Status Brew.

https://statusbrew.com/insights/2021-social-media-benchmarks-facebook-instagram-twitter/

63Barnhart, B., (9 March 2021) 2021 Social media demographics for marketers. Sprout Social.

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/

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3. National (national non-governmental organisation [NGO] leading on the subject) (11)

4. Local (local NGO in Manchester working on the subject) (11) Sampling

The project is qualitative as I seek to understand and gain insight. It is appropriate to undertake purposeful sampling⁶⁷ framed by the categories outlined above. For each level, I identify the most representative organisations per theme (e.g. UN Women on Gender Equality, UK Government Equalities Office). From their Instagram accounts, I then sample texts associated with the theme in question in 2020-2021. Although the sample size per theme/level is small (2-3) and cannot guarantee representativeness, this is a compromise given the lack of incidental consolidated databases of such campaigns. At national and local level, I identified several organisations when there were insufficient campaign materials available from one and, on rare occasions, used texts from 2019.

To limit the variables, the governmental, national and local campaigns are from the UK. Being born and educated in the UK allows me to analyse the texts with a solid cultural awareness, useful when decoding messaging grounded in national/local culture. Hence the local level campaign materials are from my home city of Manchester, whose rich history of social action - from trade unions to Suffragettes and gay rights movement - and, presently, cosmopolitan and demographically varied, make it an interesting location to choose.

Analytical approach

To answer the question whether/how values and emotions are employed to promote prosocial action on the selected topics, I conduct a textual analysis of the 42 communication campaign materials (‘texts’). As per Lockyer’s guidance, textual analysis is neither limited to written text, nor is it an attempt to ‘correctly’

interpret meaning, but to establish plausible and likely interpretations.⁶⁸ I

68Lockyer, S. (2008). Textual analysis. In Given, L.M., (Ed.). The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. (pp. 866-866). SAGE Publications, Inc.

67Merriam, S.B., (2015). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. John Wiley & Sons: Newark. pp.96-98

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therefore analyse the texts in terms of context, content and conventions in three steps to decode each of the units relevant to my theoretical framework.

Recognising the implication of the researcher in any qualitative analysis, I endeavour to perform the textual analysis methodically, seeking to answer my research question whilst remaining open to additional elements of interest. The analysis is a semiotic decoding of Barthes’ ‘connotations’, i.e. significatory elements in the texts that activate “historical, symbolic, emotional or other matters,”⁶⁹ with action, values, emotions the connotations of relevance. This semiotic approach guides the overall analysis conceptually, with specific frameworks listed below facilitating comparison by text. Simultaneously, Flams and Kleres’ work⁷⁰ informs the practical approach to analysing the visual part of the texts, applicable to all units of interrogation.

For each unit evidence is recorded according to whether it is identified in the visual or caption.

Call to action

As the objective is to discover how values and emotions are being deployed to drive social change through communication campaigns, it is essential to first identify any call(s) to action (CTA).

I split CTAs in two: general and specific. A general CTA is generic, with no concrete instruction, whereas a specific CTA defines an action/tangible behaviour, e.g. T3.1.3 includes both:

General: Take a stand for a world free of racism

Specific: Add your photo with our “I stand up to racism” filter.

70Flam, H., Kleres, J., (Eds) (2015). Methods of Exploring Emotions. Routledge: Oxon.

pp.233-239

69Barthes, cited in Lehtonen, M., (2000) The Cultural Analysis of Texts. SAGE Publications Ltd.

pp.75

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Text: 3.1.3

Textual analysis

The second step is the decoding of the texts to identify evidence – the afore-mentioned ‘connotations’ – of values and emotions in copy, image and symbols. In the metadata of the analysis, I record a narrative of where these connotations appear.

I follow Flams and Kleres on how to analyse visuals to elicit which emotions they are likely to evoke. I perform a close inspection to determine what the visual aspires to say to its viewers by drawing on everyday knowledge of the world, its symbols and socio-emotional rules, backed up by research into the visual associations of the subject matter.⁷¹ This type of analysis does not linger on the diversity of reactions that a visual could inspire in different readers (supporters, opponents, bystanders). However, it facilitates reading of the intended response, which serves to answer the research question as to whether/how actors for social change are communicating. Given the dual exploration of this research, I expand Flams and Keres methodology for emotions to study the presence of values in the selected texts, as well as applying the logic to words in each text.

Values and emotions need to be decoded in parallel to explore whether the two elements are used together, independently, or not at all in promoting prosociality. To produce analysis that is comparable across subjects and levels, I employ established value and emotion frameworks proven universally

71 Flam, H., Kleres, J., (Eds) (2015). Methods of Exploring Emotions. Routledge: Oxon.

pp.233-239

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applicable and provide a nomenclature and structure for this project and future research.

Values

I employ Schwartz’ Refined Theory (Fig.3) for the level of detail its sub-categories offer. To decode the texts by values, I record both when a value is ‘spoken to’ (concordant with) the value and when it is challenged by the text (i.e. discordant with the value in question, as per the status quo). For example T1.4.1 speaks to stimulation and simultaneously challenges tradition by encouraging readers to discuss domestic abuse, a historically taboo subject.

Text: 1.4.1

Emotions

Dennison did not include emotions in his analysis as sympathy was not a facilitator but an end-goal. As my investigation revolves around the idea of values and emotions being stimulated simultaneously, I require a way to tag emotions broadly, rather than sympathy specifically.

Based on previous research on emotions in social media, I employ Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions as it is a manageable framework of eight primary emotions that are culturally independent and has been successfully used to tag emotions in Tweets for transnational social media analysis.⁷²⁷³ Whilst these examples analysed responses, rather than stimuli, the research demonstrates how the

73Abhijit, M., et al (2020). Mining Emotions on Plutchik's Wheel. Conference paper for Seventh International Conference on Social Networks Analysis, Management and Security (SNAMS)

72Pechenizkiy, M., Tromp, E., (2014) Rule-based Emotion Detection on Social Media: Putting Tweets on Plutchik’s Wheel Working paper.

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wheel can guide objective analysis of emotion-relevant content (words, images, emoji). The nature of emotional response risks its decoding being more subjective, than the value-decoding. As per my hypothesis, evidence that a text is likely to evoke an emotion (or multiple) implies the emotional engagement necessary in the formula to appraise the situation and, possibly, generate action. It is therefore plausible evidence that something will create ‘emotional contagion’⁷⁴ that is important, rather than the category of emotion. This explains why emotions are listed in less granular detail than the values, and why the derived emotions - combinations of two primary emotions - are not listed (although a few are flagged in the full analysis as they are explicitly mentioned in the text e.g. T4.1.1 “Keep calm and love whom you want”).

Figure 5: Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions (1980)

Source: Pechenizkiy, M., Tromp, E., (2014) Rule-based Emotion Detection on Social Media:

Putting Tweets on Plutchik’s Wheel. Working paper

Meta data, data distillation & comparison

All evidence from CTA, value and emotion decoding is recorded in a table of descriptive meta-data, ordered by theme. Points of interest that do not fit in the categories are recorded under ‘other’.

74Emotional contagion: rapid, unintentional transmission of an emotional response from one individual to another. Defined in Heyes, C., (December 2018). Empathy is not in our genes.

Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews. Vol.95 pp.499-507.

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Table 1: Descriptive metadata table⁷⁵ Theme:

Level Text Call to action Use of values Use of emotions Other Global T1.1.1 Visual:

Caption:

Visual:

Caption:

Visual:

Caption:

Limitations & reflection

As with all research, there are certain limitations to bear in mind and alternative approaches to consider.

There is an innate subjectivity to qualitative analysis, which is heightened by the personal nature of values and emotions. Above I have explained how I use existing frameworks and analytical approaches to guide objectivity. However, no textual analysis can claim to identify all readings of a text. Although this is not my aim, my role in the process must be made explicit all the same.⁷⁶ It is possible that text selection and decoding are influenced by my background, education and Western European perspective. This is something I attempt to turn to analytical advantage, by considering texts from the culture and context I am most aware of. However, it brings a risk of essentialism, and also narrows how representational the findings are, given the UK focus of three levels, as well as only analysing English-language texts.

In future research, my decoding of the texts could be cross-referenced with decoding performed by other researchers,⁷⁷ or alternative methodologies could have been used to address these issues and go beyond desk research, for example using focus groups to discuss reactions to texts, or sentiment analysis of the comments in response. I analyse neither likes, nor comments because the data would exceed the scope.

77It would be good to have ‘decoders’ of different backgrounds in order to balance any risk of value interpretation differing according to an individual’s background or the context in which the text is analysed. This would also serve to confirm the universal nature of Schwartz’s value framework and observe whether this is determinable in text-analysis as well as for individuals.

76Cheek, J., (2008). Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. in Given, L., (2012) ‘ The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods ’. Sage Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks

75The full meta data for the 42 texts runs to 44 A4 pages. An example is included in the appendix 2. Summative tables of values/emotions by theme and producer level provide an overview of the results and are discussed in the next chapter.

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I selected the methodology for feasibility because of the short time-frame and restrictions on in-person interactions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, I designed the methodology so that the results may act as a building block for research with a more participatory approach, potentially involving both the producers and the readers to consider intent and impact.