Traversa Marissa, Tian Ying, Wright Stephen C
Intergroup Relations and Social Justice Lab, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jul 20;14:1181872. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1181872. eCollection 2023.
Social psychological research on collective action and intergroup harm has yet to adequately consider the potential role of cancel culture or feelings of collective validation in motivating collective action. The current research will begin to fill this gap and may broaden our understanding of the psychological mechanisms that inspire and maintain collective action in response to intergroup harm. To our knowledge, this research is the first social psychological analysis of the impact of cancel culture on collective action and as means for producing feelings of collective validation.
In two experimental studies, participants read a story describing an event of discrimination against their group followed by a manipulation of the presence or absence of an episode of cancel culture. Study 1 samples woman university students ( = 520) and focuses on their responses to a sexist incident on campus. Study 2 (pre-registered) assesses the generality of the model in a racism context with a community sample of East Asian Canadians and Americans ( = 237).
Study 1 showed that an episode of cancel culture had an indirect positive effect on collective action intentions mediated by feelings of collective validation and collective empowerment. Study 2 showed the indirect effect of cancel culture on collective action intentions mediated by feelings of collective validation and collective anger and contempt.
The current research offers a novel theoretical and empirical introduction to the concept of collective validation and the understudied context of cancel culture to the existing social psychological research and theory on collective action. Further, cancel culture has been criticized as problematic. However, this perspective centres those in positions of power. Through this research, we hope to shift the focus onto marginalized groups' perspectives of episodes of cancel culture. This research shows that groups who experience harm find these episodes of cancel culture validating in ways that have yet to be fully explored by intergroup relations research. Further, these findings suggest that collective validation does mediate the relationship between cancel culture and collective action; thus, cancel culture becomes an important contributor to resistance by marginalized groups through collective validation.
社会心理学对集体行动和群体间伤害的研究尚未充分考虑取消文化或集体认可感在激发集体行动中的潜在作用。当前的研究将开始填补这一空白，并可能拓宽我们对激发和维持针对群体间伤害的集体行动的心理机制的理解。据我们所知，这项研究是对取消文化对集体行动的影响以及作为产生集体认可感的手段的首次社会心理学分析。
在两项实验研究中，参与者阅读一个描述针对其群体的歧视事件的故事，随后对是否存在取消文化情节进行操纵。研究1以女大学生为样本（n = 520），重点关注她们对校园性别歧视事件的反应。研究2（预先注册）在种族主义背景下，以加拿大东亚裔和美国的社区样本（n = 237）评估该模型的普遍性。
研究1表明，取消文化情节通过集体认可感和集体赋权感对集体行动意图产生间接的积极影响。研究2表明，取消文化通过集体认可感、集体愤怒和轻蔑感对集体行动意图产生间接影响。
当前的研究为集体认可概念以及对现有社会心理学关于集体行动的研究和理论中研究不足的取消文化背景提供了新颖的理论和实证介绍。此外，取消文化被批评为有问题。然而，这种观点以掌权者为中心。通过这项研究，我们希望将焦点转移到边缘化群体对取消文化情节的看法上。这项研究表明，遭受伤害的群体发现这些取消文化情节具有尚未被群体间关系研究所充分探索的确认作用。此外，这些发现表明集体认可确实调节了取消文化与集体行动之间的关系；因此，取消文化通过集体认可成为边缘化群体抵抗的重要因素。
