Cancel Culture | Mental Health & Personality

hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can analyze the mental health and personality factors behind cancel culture cancel culture is a behavior where a group of people boycott businesses and the work products of celebrities ostensibly to create some type of social change just a reminder I'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon I'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so the idea of cancel culture is really a variation of an old concept the concept of boycotting a company or a celebrity violates some type of social norm and people decide not to give their business to that offending party what makes cancel culture different than just a boycott is the level and intensity of the activity in one sense boycotting is relatively passive somebody regularly purchases a product from somebody and then they decide not to so it's straightforward engaging in the cancellation of an entity is an action that consumes resources so it's quite a bit different it really takes effort to participate in the cancel culture now the level of engagement in cancel culture varies some people simply post something on social media like Twitter or Facebook something like that but others really get into it like it's a way of life and that's the group I'm really talking about here not the seemingly normal behavior of someone being upset when something is offensive and taking some sort of action but rather the obsession with causing harm what we see here is that a very small percentage of active participants in cancel culture are responsible for the vast majority of the communication when I use the term cancel culture in this video I'm referring to this small highly active group one of the key parts of cancel culture is the set of criteria for something being offensive or not and as we've seen many times there is no precise definition of what qualifies if somebody did something that is clearly offensive ten years ago and they haven't done it since does that make them eligible for cancellation if they make a small mistake currently does that qualify again there's no way to know exactly what qualifies and what doesn't essentially cancel culture demands perfection the expectation is that businesses and celebrities know and follow a certain set of rules and when they violate the rules they must have done so intentionally and maliciously furthermore they violation of the rules reveals that the offending party is evil in every way beyond redemption so we have dichotomous thinking here people are all good or all bad given the characteristics of canceled culture it's easy to understand why many consider it toxic we see an increasing number of reports indicating it is unhealthy for everyone the participants and the offending parties the canceled culture appetite for destruction does not have limits there's no satisfying people who harassed the offending parties it's not like there's a clear set of demands and a course to meet those demands it's rather just sheer aggression an attempt to dominate they want to assert their will through harassment by pretending they have some type of moral high-ground and by making it seem like they represent the will of a larger population their behavior is really nothing more than a collection of tactics meant to limit free speech so they have a few potential mottos one would be I can say whatever I want but you cannot say whatever you want the second you don't need to think because I can think for you and the third two wrongs make a right and I think that really captures the essence of again this extreme subset of canceled culture they are okay doing things wrong to combat what they believe is wrong so against this moral justification that we see behind it now moving to the mental health and personality characteristics of this extreme subset this group is not well studied the evidence we have about people who engage in this behavior is really anecdotal often these people do not identify as part of the Kancil culture but rather they promote the idea that they are warriors in a great moral battle typically active participants in cancel culture art teenagers sometimes we see people in the early 20s occasionally they can be older than that as well it appears that they have a lot in common with the construct of the internet troll that is they have some antisocial narcissistic and sadistic characteristics they are often individuals who do not fit well in society and therefore they want to cause mayhem in society they want to disrupt that which has rejected them essentially what we see here is collective sadism we see multiple trolls getting together and being destructive as a group another angle here I mentioned is narcissism we see vulnerable narcissism here one based on resentfulness insecurity and shame merged with the grandiose narcissistic characteristic of being dominant Kancil culture declares that they understand morality better than anyone else could but in reality of course they are simply trying to increase their position by decreasing the position of others as I've said many times before in other videos narcissist can increase their position by decreasing the position of everyone else what we see of course is they typically do little damage to the object of the cancellation but a tremendous amount of damage to themselves in the clinical world I've heard about a number of case studies again anecdotal but I would hope the research would catch up on his topic soon I've heard about situations where individuals will spend five or six hours a day simply making negative comments on cancellation targets substance use also appears to be prevalent in this group sometimes they take their behavior so far they attract civil litigation and in some cases even law enforcement this active subset has a desperate need to belong in a group it doesn't matter if that group has anti-social values so they may be thinking I would rather belong to a bad group than be isolated they can earn rank in that group by being aggressive so antisocial behavior is really rewarded in this context so what's the personality profile of somebody active at this level in castle culture well to conceptualize personality I'll use the five factor model I remember the five factors through the acronym ocean openness to experience conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism so with openness we see a low level we see rigid thinking a limited appreciation for art somebody who's not particularly creative not intellectually curious so really they're not interested in learning and growing we see low conscientiousness so irresponsible and pulse of and disorganized the extraversion level is mid to high you see someone who's talkative assertive and not predisposed to carefully analyzing information agreeableness is low we see limited altruism someone who's not straightforward and someone who is antagonistic with neuroticism we see the level is extremely high a person this group is highly emotionally reactive angry depressed and they have difficulty resisting temptation so if canceled culture hurts everybody then what can be done what should people do when they see a company or a celebrity that has violated some type of moral convention the paradox of cancel culture is that its mission is supposed to cause positive change but its method doesn't actually allow for growth a course of action that allows for development would make more sense cancel culture simply makes everything worse also because of the irrational nature of canceled culture entities that are actually destructive canal fail to take responsibility they can just say oh that reaction was just part of that cancel culture I think a dialog makes more sense it's more effective than an attempt to cancel some type of discussion that can allow for a meaningful change the risks of being involved with canceled culture are simply too high for the participants and of course as I mentioned the efforts of canceled culture are rarely successful we even see evidence that suggests that the objects of cancellation can become more popular due to the increased exposure so it may be true that there is no such thing as bad publicity so those my thoughts on cancel culture please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 96,715

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Id: S0rIR7jcLZ4

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 12 2020