Michael John Adams
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- For other people called Michael Adams, see Michael Adams (disambiguation)
Michael John Adams (born September 29, 1946) is a Canadian writer and public opinion researcher.
Education:
- 1968 - BA in Political Science from Queen's University
- 1970 - MA in Sociology from the University of Toronto
Biography:
In 1970 Adams co-founded Environics Research Group, a polling and market research firm based in Toronto, Canada. Since that time, the Environics group of companies has expanded to include several firms in both Canada and the United States devoted to public opinion research, geodemographics, and communications. Using social values surveys, Adams and his colleagues at Environics Research Group (Toronto, ON) and American Environics (Oakland, CA) track and interpret social change and its implications for marketers, managers, and policymakers. Bibliography:
Since 1998, Adams has written a series of books exploring the evolution of social values in Canada and the United States.
- Sex in the Snow: Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium (Penguin, 1998).
Describes the values evolution in the latter half of the 20th Century that saw Canadians abandon their traditional values of religiosity, deference to authority, and deferred gratification to embrace secularism, personal autonomy, and hedonism. Divides the Canadian population into thirteen "social values tribes."
- Better Happy Than Rich?: Canadians, Money and the Meaning of Life (Penguin, 2000).
Describes how Canadians' values inform their financial behaviour, from consumer spending to investment and philanthropy.
- Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values (Penguin, 2003).
Argues that Americans and Canadians are diverging in their values. Won the 2003-4 Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy.
- American Backlash: The Untold story of Social Change in the United States (Penguin, 2005).
Argues that the most important values schism in the United States is not the famed Red/Blue divide but the gap between voters and non-voters.
