Having a robust social network improves our physical health. Social connections also affect our mental health such as anxiety and overall happiness. The Japanese practice of moai gives social and public sectors a way to hack our social nature to help people live better.
We’re social animals. That means there’s always someone else around, and that means it’s easy for people to shirk responsibilities.
Research by Raj Chetty of Stanford University shows that designing healthy communities can increase life expectancy, especially for low-income populations. What features can you design into healthy communities for people earning incomes in the bottom quartile?
Our social nature is serious business. We are social animals by nature and nurture; we don’t survive alone. Loneliness kills and needs to be addressed like any social health hazard. How do you combat loneliness with a marketing mindset? The way the U.K. is doing it.
When human communities subsisted as hunter-gatherers, we recognized the evolutionary benefit of fairness. As our social nature evolved to living in settled communities, some people started having more than others. We accepted a certain level of inequality–as long as everyone had enough. But that begs the question: what is the fair distribution of social goods?...Continue reading
Earth already has a majority urban population. According to urban planner Peter Calthorpe, by 2050 our planet’s urban population will double. That means providing social goods and services to billions more city dwellers. How we accommodate that urban growth will say a lot about who we are and want to be. We can choose to...Continue reading
Our social nature is the basis for marketing public and social goods. How effective we are in social interactions directly influences the success of our marketing and ultimately whether we succeed in our social mission. Here’s the research-proven way to win more cooperation:
From more than 60 years of experience and research concerning car-dependent suburbs, we now know that these environments create people and lifestyles with less social interaction: less civic volunteering, less participation in recreational team sports, even less voting. We’re uniquely social animals, wired to cooperate and interact with large numbers of our fellows in novel...Continue reading
To continue bringing you topics of interest in the new year, I took a look back at what you read the most this year. Here are the top five posts published in 2016, as measured by your views: 1–Free download! White paper template for Microsoft Powerpoint In the public and social spheres, creating and publishing...Continue reading
According to the United Nations, a majority of the world’s population now resides in urban areas. The trend towards urbanization shows no signs of slowing, either. By 2050, two-thirds of the planet’s population will be urban. Urban areas are organically connecting into megaregions that don’t always respect existing political or natural boundaries. Marketing in megaregions demands...Continue reading