I Love You, but I Have Got to Cancel You: Psychological Consequences of Participation in Cancel Culture

This study explores how individuals react to celebrities who take a political stance that contradicts and threatens their social identity. An online experiment examines these questions in the context of the Israeli war against Hamas in the wake of the October 7 terror attack. Israeli Jewish participants who were led to believe that a beloved celebrity fully embraced the Palestinian's narrative and condemned Israel experienced more negative and less positive emotions and had a greater intention to cancel the celebrity. However, writing a comment or a social media post (particularly if the comment bashed the celebrity) partially buffered these emotional effects. Effects were moderated by the intensity of the media user's parasocial relationship with the celebrity and the strength of their identification with Israel. The findings offer a unique perspective on why, under certain circumstances, engaging in toxic cancel culture behaviors can be experienced as psychologically rewarding in the short term.