One of the challenges that public opinion researchers face is that people are not always cooperative in sharing what is on their minds. Sometimes people do not want to be judged for an opinion they think might be controversial. In other cases, people have not spent time articulating their thoughts in words. Think about how often you talk about having a gut sense or that you have a feeling that has implications for what you end up saying or doing, even if you don’t have extensive explanations available to offer in perfectly grammatical prose or logical argumentation. That is not to say you are not prompted and inspired and motivated by responses to — and anticipation of — the world around you. Sometimes we simply do not ask people exactly the most relevant or helpful question in trying to assess where they stand and where they are headed in terms of future decision making about health behaviors or civic engagement or support for their town’s recycling initiative.
Communication professionals with experience in eliciting emotion and in using creativity to connect people can offer insights that can help us assess perceptions that are tinged with emotion or that reflect feelings, perceptions we know can predict future action in many cases. On this episode of The Measure of Everyday Life, we talk with Tomas Gonsorcik, Global Chief Strategy Officer at DDB Worldwide, about innovations that communication professionals have developed to assess how groups of people feel as a means of assessing what they might eventually think and do.
You can hear our conversation with Tomas here.
The Measure of Everyday Life 