Researchers present a new model to understand individual impacts of cancel culture prevention

A recent study conducted at the Centre for Psychological Research and Social Intervention (CIS-Iscte) introduces the Pressure for Perfect Conduct (PPC) model, designed to explain how individuals experience and respond to cancel culture.

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With the rapid growth of the internet and social media, people today can connect with each other more easily than ever before. In this context, digital platforms can immortalize information and have increasingly become places for scrutiny of people’s past activity. With this possibility arose the sense of constant vigilance of people’s discourses, with the consequent self-surveillance and self-censorship to avoid being cancelled. Cancel culture can be defined as the widespread practice, largely driven by social media, where individuals or groups collectively withdraw support from a person, company or organization perceived to have acted offensively or immorally. According to the authors of this study, “It operates as a modern form of public shaming or accountability, often described as a digital ‘court of public opinion’.”

The authors of this research – Tiago Rôxo Aguiar (CIS-Iscte & BRU-Iscte), Diniz Lopes (CIS-Iscte) and Thomas R. Brooks (New Mexico Highlands University) – consider that amidst such conditions, people must strive for perfection to avoid online scrutiny and cancelation. Hence, they propose a new concept – the Pressure for a Perfect Conduct (PPC) – and a new theoretical model to explore the individual effects of canceling prevention.

In the published paper, PPC is described as “the pressure one feels to conduct themselves perfectly under the threat of being canceled.” This pressure is strongly rooted in the concept of perfectionism, in the way that people set excessively high personal standards and engage in overly critical self-evaluations to avoid mistakes at all costs. We often observe people portraying themselves as having the perfect body or a perfect lifestyle, which are examples of how perfectionism is intertwined with social media. The authors explain that “because being canceled can result in social disapproval, reputational damage, or other negative consequences” (e.g., J.K. Rowling), the threat of being cancelled will motivate people to maintain a highly curated and polished online persona to avoid repercussions.

Building upon research from several subfields of Social Psychology, the authors explain that cancel culture could serve as a control mechanism aiming to enforce a set of morals and/or behaviors, leading to heightened self-surveillance and perfectionistic self-presentation. Engaging in these behaviors would serve as an adaptive strategy to prevent cancelation via the psychological, mediating variable introduced here (the pressure for a perfect conduct). “The theoretical model we propose considers five variables that would predict this pressure for a perfect conduct: perceived self-pressure and perceived status, which relate to perfectionist strivings; and perceived repercussions of cancelling, group identity and level of agreement with public opinion, which all relate to perfectionist concerns.”, clarifies Tiago Rôxo Aguiar, a Psychology doctoral student at Iscte and first author of this paper.

In the study, the research team empirically assessed the external validity of the proposed model by conducting in-depth interviews with 20 Portuguese social media users. Through content analysis of the interview transcripts, they explored how cancel culture influences online and offline behavior, mental health, and beliefs. Participants reported feeling considerable pressure to behave in such a way that would reduce the chances of being canceled. Driven by constant monitoring and judgment from others, this pressure would lead to heightened states of self-surveillance, and behaviors linked to self-censoring.

While past research is not consensual regarding the existence or the valence of cancel culture, data from this study suggest that lay people recognize the phenomenon and consider that canceling can be performed to anyone, not just powerful figures. Additionally, participants stated that this pressure for a perfect conduct can be impactful for people’s mental health and their social interactions, both for who is cancelled and for those cancelling. “The overall results, albeit attained with a limited sample, support the model’s potential as a tool for future research to quantify and predict how cancel culture affects individuals across different contexts.”, conclude the authors of this study.

By proposing a structured approach to study cancel culture's psychological effects, this research opens new possibilities for psychosocial research. It also prompts society to consider the mental health implications of online vigilantism and the need for interventions to mitigate its adverse effects. Overall, the study offers a foundational framework for understanding and addressing the personal toll of cancel culture in the digital age, and the clear need for more research on this topic.

Text written by Pedro Simão Mendes (Science Communication Manager)