GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Moving Mindsets & Framing the Future, with Tamsyn Hyatt
In this episode we talk to Tamsyn Hyatt, Director of Evidence at Frameworks UK, and talk about how strategic communications can drive meaningful social change. With a rich background spanning history, law, science, and activism, Tamsyn has dedicated her career to making complex social issues understandable through the power of framing and narrative.
The conversation unlocks what framing actually means in practice—making deliberate choices about how we communicate ideas to tap into different ways of thinking that already exist within all of us. Tamsyn introduces us to "cognitive polyphagia," our ability to hold contradictory understandings of the world and toggle between them depending on context. Through concrete examples like reframing justice in England and Wales, she demonstrates how positioning the rule of law as an enabler rather than merely preventative builds stronger public support.
At the heart of this episode is Frameworks UK's groundbreaking "Moving Mindsets" project, which maps the deep patterns of thinking people use to reason about health, wealth, and government. Their research reveals we're at an inflection point where individualism remains dominant but is being challenged by more systemic mindsets. Most excitingly, they've discovered that mindsets cluster together, with certain "linchpin mindsets" activating others within the same cluster.
Listen now to discover how understanding and shifting mindsets could be the key to building a more just and sustainable world.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone. You are listening to Good Ge Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from MIR Agency, Istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Tamsin Haidt, who is the Director of Evidence at Frameworks UK, where she works to understand how people think about social issues and what changes those things.
Speaker 3:And we love a bit of framing, tamsin, so you're an expert in narrative and strategic comms. You've worked with organisations right across Europe to do research and to practice on really important issues like health inequalities, homelessness, child welfare and, before Frameworks, you worked for the Equality and Diversity Forum, which is a network of organisations working to advance equality and human rights. So, tamzin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be sat around the virtual table with you both.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's lovely. Well, listen. Let's start with the backstory from you and what led you to the heady heights of working at Frameworks UK.
Speaker 4:Okay, well, I've always been really interested in how people think in people and how we think, how we reason about our world and how it works, and why it is that we accept some behaviours, some policies, some practices and not others, and I spend a lot of time exploring different ways to understand people and what it means to build a shared understanding of the world around us in order to change it. So my background is pretty varied. I have roots in a few different places and spaces history, law, science, communication, charity, communication, activism, organizing, and all of this led me to one conclusion, so bear with me for this one. I think that most of us, if we better understand the world around us and how it works, we tend to make pretty decent decisions, ones that are rooted in evidence, in solidarity, in justice. But our challenge is that the world is complicated, injustice.
Speaker 4:But our challenge is that the world is complicated and it's really hard to communicate that complexity in ways that people can understand, that are accessible and immediate, that can kind of drive attention in a really crowded cultural landscape. And we're all busy. We might have kids, cats, caring responsibilities, multiple jobs, multiple hobbies. We don't have time to read a 50-page policy report on all of the things that matter. So if we do want to change understanding, change thinking, change the world, we all need to be better communicators, and I don't think it's enough to be expert on a social issue. We also have to be expert in communicating about that issue, making it understandable. Otherwise, we miss out on a key part of existing in society, in community with others, which is informed decision making, which is informed decision-making. And the best way we have to do this, in my view, is through narrative, through framing and through story which is what has led me to the heady heights of Frameworks UK.
Speaker 2:Samson, this is great. I'm all with you. It seems that you're not a Hobbes girl but a Rousseau's girl, believing in decent choices in humanity. I love this, I really do. But Frameworks UK let's turn to that. It has been doing great work for a number of years but might still be new to a few people. So maybe you could do an explainer on Frameworks, the connection with the US and your main work streams.
Speaker 4:Of course, yeah. So Frameworks UK is a non-profit communications research organisation and, as you kindly said in the intro, we spend our time doing two things figuring out how people think about an issue and then what are the narratives, what are the frames that change those things? And we tend to take quite a multidisciplinary approach to social change. We draw from anthropology, linguistics, the cognitive sciences, and take this research, this insight, and work in partnership with charities, campaigners, foundations, organisations working towards social change. Frameworks UK is the sister organisation of the Frameworks Institute over in the US, which has been up and running in this space for, I think, about 25 years now, and here in the UK we broadly focus on about four areas economic justice, health equity, access to justice and issues that affect children and families. But we've also worked on climate, particularly litigation, and ocean health, and right now I'm leading on a few projects, but broadly reframing justice in England and Wales, reframing care experience up in Scotland and our moving mindsets work which hopefully we'll have time to explore a bit later on.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and I'm trying to drag you into the world of climate again, aren't I with another project? But that's not for now. What I'd love to get into is going a bit deeper into framing. So it's becoming a little bit of a leitmotif in our podcast, actually, so we keep coming back to framing and it's become such a powerful. Why, from your perspective? Why has it become such a powerful tool used by campaigners for both good and bad?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's a really good question, and I'll start with a definition.
Speaker 4:So we've got something to work with, because I think framing has become particularly popular in social change spaces, particularly in the UK, particularly over the last five years or so choices about what ideas we share and how we share them. And this might mean how, what we emphasize, how we could explain an issue and what we leave unsaid. And I'd argue that framing has always been a really powerful tool for communicators, because we find that the right frame can lead to quite radical changes in how people think, feel and and I think this is because we all hold really different and sometimes entirely contradictory ways of thinking about the world A fancy term here is cognitive polyphagia, and we can quite rapidly toggle between these different ways of thinking within our daily lives, within a single conversation or sometimes even within the same sentence. And the right frame is one that can bring these different ways of thinking to the fore, can tap into something that is more accurate and more helpful and strengthen this in mind, and I'll give you an example from reframing justice work.
Speaker 4:We know that there are two ways in England and Wales of understanding the rule of law, how it works, what it does. The first is that it prevents social chaos and the second is that it enables social harmony and for most of us in England and Wales, that first way of thinking that prevention of social chaos is dominant. And we know why because right now this way of thinking is activated and reinforced through framing, through culture. We have politicians, institutions, campaigners repeating the narrative that without the rule of law we would have anarchy. They're framing the rule of law as preventative in comms that emphasize the potential for harm or everything that we lose if and when the rule of law is undermined, based on the assumption that this is how we get people to support the rule of law and defend it against rising authoritarianism and overreach.
Speaker 4:And I think there's a lot we could go into here about the limitations of crisis framing and its inability to mobilize. But I want to highlight something else, which is that by framing the rule of law as preventative, we leave it vulnerable to accusations that tend to be made by opponents of the rule of law that the rule of law is just more red tape to overcome, it doesn't stop abuses, it stops progress. But we know that there is more that framing can do different understandings that we can build, the power of framing, the power of narrative. We can position the rule of law as an enabler. We can tap into that second and more recessive way of understanding the rule of law as something that enables social harmony, and we know from that work that the frames that build this understanding are better able to build support for the rule of law and that governments should be held accountable for it.
Speaker 3:Damilou, just before you come in, though, I have to just do one quick thing, which is on red tape as an example of framing. I think red tape is fascinating because I remember an example from a good few years ago here in the UK. It was way before Brexit, and they did a survey and small businesses said that red tape on the environment was holding back their business. And it was basically 90% of businesses said that red tape is holding us back, but then when you asked them, only I think it was 15% could actually name a bit of red tape that was actually holding them back. So it's like this whole frame. Sorry, damla, I had to jump in. Red tape, I think is fascinating the really powerful metaphor.
Speaker 4:It's visual, it's gripping and it activates.
Speaker 3:That way of understanding who came up with that phrase, red tape? We have to go back in history and figure it out. They were clever.
Speaker 2:Sorry damla, I jumped in over to you that that was good, and I was just thinking that from an Anatolian philosopher, Rumi. He says that no matter how much you tell, what you say is only as much as the other person understands. So I think that's very important when we frame what we want to say, because we always think that when we say something it's completely understood by the receiver, but it's not. You have to think about what the other person sees, thinks, and so on. So I think that's fascinating and, Tamsin, your work is really fascinating. And with the red tape also Steve in mind, I want to ask, Tamsin, are the forces of polarization doing a better job of framing their conversation and communications, Because it seems they reach out to the masses quickly and really make a shift.
Speaker 4:I think that's a really interesting question and a really important conversation to have, because I think it gets at the heart of what framing is, which is making choices, not just about the frames and the narratives we use in comms, but also in what we need our communications to do. And what I have found, particularly if we are thinking about the forces of polarization versus those who we might describe as working for more progressive causes in these kinds of spaces, often those of us who are working for more progressive causes are firefighting. We're having to respond really rapidly to growing harm or growing crises, and that means we are working with limited time, limited resources and we just don't have the capacity to navigate polarization or to invest in that long-term work of shifting thinking, building understanding over, say, fundraising or raising awareness of vital supports and services, and we need both. So I don't think it's necessarily a question of are they doing a better job. I think it's who has what resource and what choices can you make as a result. But I still think it's impossible not to look at or to be in society or communities and not feel and see that impact of growing polarization.
Speaker 4:And there will be lots of reasons for why this and why now and lots of it will be in how we frame our communications, in part because we know it is a lot harder to tell a story, to frame a communication that works at a population level, that is able to communicate complexity and it doesn't inadvertently backfire.
Speaker 4:For example, our reframing justice work. We tested a values frame that we were sure would be doing some good and this was collective responsibility, the idea that as a society we have a collective responsibility to act to strengthen, to defend the rule of law, to improve access to justice. But in testing we found a really significant backfire effect, a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment as a result of exposure to this frame. In hindsight could have predicted it, but if we hadn't tested for backfire effects we just wouldn't have known. That focuses in on the harm done to an individual who might look like me and sound like me by someone who perhaps looks very different, to position that person as undeserving or other. And, as you alluded, a lot of our cultural infrastructure is set up to amplify stories that are framed and are structured in this way both the expectation of kind of linear hero's journey stars, storytelling and film to social algorithms that reward outrage over meaningful engagement.
Speaker 3:We know, we all know this so there's so much time saying we're gonna have to do a mini series on this and the. I was hoping you're going to help me stop putting out fires. The firefighting for those of us who work for progressive causes is exhausting, isn't it? So I am hoping you're going to fix all of this with your moving mindsets project. So I we've kind of been building up to you talking about the really big project that you're sort of stewarding, which is Moving Mindset, so we'd love to find out more about that program. The headlines that are emerging for you on some key topics, aren't they around health, wealth and politics? So tell us about Moving Mindset.
Speaker 4:Cool. Thanks, steve. What I also want to flag is, in the spirit of addressing some of the firefighting and some of the work, that we are less polarized than we think that right now. There is more that is similar in how we reason about the world, how we think about the world, than is different, which does mean that we have a lot more to work with if we are working to reduce polarization and to make space for progressive change. But I will talk a bit more about our Moving Mindsets program. This is something that I am really excited about. It's a first of its kind tracking and mapping of the mindsets people draw on to reason about our world and how it works. And I've used the term ways of thinking in our talk today. But there is slightly more to it than that, because by a way of thinking I mean a mindset, a deep, assumed pattern of thinking that sits below the level of opinion or talk. And, if it wasn't obvious by now, I see moving mindsets building understanding through framing and through narrative work as essentially at the heart of social change.
Speaker 4:So in 2024, last year, we set out to track mindsets across the four nations of the UK with that broad focus on health, wealth and government. And in the interest of time I will not dive too deeply into our methods, but this was a year-long pilot study involving a tracking survey minimum 1,500 per wave, 12 nationally representative peer discourse sessions, which is a fancy kind of focus group and compared to analysis with our existing body of mindsets work and we found a lot. But I will stick to three headlines. The first is that right now we are at an inflection point. Individualism, which is the assumption that what happens to us is primarily a consequence of our own choices, is dominant in public thinking and it can lead to polarization. But we are seeing more systemic mindsets emerging, like the belief that our economy is designed and that one solution to poverty is quite radical redistribution of wealth. And some mindsets, some ways of thinking, do cluster together, they act to reinforce or undermine each other and, crucially, some mindsets act as linchpins with perhaps quite major implications for social change work. And I will very quickly unpack the last two, because all of this is is exciting, but I think these are the most exciting findings for people working in the social change space.
Speaker 4:So many of the ways in which we think about our world and how it works are connected and by tracking connections, correlations over time, we found that thinking across the UK is shaped by two distinct and competing clusters of mindsets and, to be clear, these mindsets are as available to one person as another. This isn't about two camps of people. These are two ways of thinking that we can all access with the right frames. And the first cluster is a tendency to exclude and zoom in. They link success to individual action, position government as really quite unnecessary and if you're drawing on mindsets in this cluster, you're more likely to support the status quo. However, our second cluster describes a tendency to zoom out, to link success to context, to resources, to see a role for government in improving our lives. And if we can strengthen this cluster, we can challenge the status quo, because when people are zooming out, they see changes to systems and conditions as vital for all of us to do well.
Speaker 4:And some mindsets within each cluster act as linchpins, and by that I mean they activate and strengthen mindsets within the same cluster, which means that if we can move a linchpin mindset, make it stronger, make it weaker, we can also move every other mindset in that cluster, even if we are not influencing or engaging with those mindsets directly.
Speaker 4:Which means that faced with limited time, limited resource, we can maximize our impact by coming together across different social issues and focusing on a single linchpin mindset for that zoomed out cluster. This means strengthening the mindset, the way of thinking, the idea that society shapes success. Because if we can campaign, influence, tell stories, make experiences that strengthen people's understanding that society shapes success, we see a ripple effect Because we also strengthen people's understanding of the social drivers of health, what it would mean to share the wealth, that our economy is designed and so can be redesigned, and we build support for government action to address social inequalities and we also make it less likely that people will hold the racist and anti-immigrant attitudes we've identified in the competing zoomed in cluster, even if our campaigns, our stories, our cultural or our policy work doesn't mention health or redistribution or immigration or government directly, which is a considerable opening for us wow, wow.
Speaker 2:Find the keystones and then change the whole architecture. That's what I got. I know exactly I think it's bloody genius so our final question our network is ironically called do not smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:That is a tough question. I would say that right now, the person that always makes me smile is my mum. She is just coming off her sixth round of chemo and has kept joy in her heart throughout the whole process.
Speaker 3:Wow, bloody hell. Well done Tamzin's mum for keeping joy with her every moment. Tamzin, it's been amazing talking to you. I mean, I'm a big fan of what you do and I've followed it for a good while and you're dead right, you started off this thing. That framing isn't actually always that new and I think in our industry of communications it probably does go back as far as you can imagine, but with those deeper mindsets that you're starting to examine now, I think we're reaching a new level here where some really important work is being done. So it's been absolutely brilliant talking to you. Thank you so much, damla. Do you want to wrap us up being done? So it's been absolutely brilliant talking to you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, damla. Do you want to wrap us up?
Speaker 3:so thanks to everyone who has listened to our good guys podcast, brought to you by the do not smile network of agencies and make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people like tamzin about how we can work together to create a more sustainable so, tamsin, damla, see you soon.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability Hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Dns Network you.
