Cancel culture has dominated the culture in the Western world for quite a while now. This means that people are cancelling shows, appointments, and firing people easily, quickly, without much thought, based on a report. It is coming into the culture to just dismiss people. An example is the firing of Major-General Dany Fortin in Canada, the former head of the vaccine rollout, due to a report of sexual indiscretion 30 years ago. (An example such as this does not mean I am supporting him, or think he is innocent, or that I am being non-supportive and think he is guilty. I am neutral. Some people may think I am taking sides because suspicion and cynicism are contagious).
Cancel culture is motivated and enabled by the dynamics of emotional contagion, which seems to have nullified neutrality. Emotions don’t think and yet people are assigned guilt based on emotion. Cancel culture is defined by Cambridge Dictionary as “a way of behaving in a society or group, especially on social media, in which it is common to completely reject and stop supporting someone because they have said or done something that offends you.” (Barrera, 2021) Urban Dictionary, where the popular definitions often blend together the cognitive essence of a concept with the emotional antecedents and consequences of the same concept, says that cancel culture is “A modern internet phenomenon where a person is ejected from influence or fame by questionable actions. It is caused by a critical mass of people who are quick to judge and slow to question. It is commonly caused by an accusation, whether that accusation has merit or not. It is a direct result of the ignorance of people caused by communication technologies outpacing the growth in available knowledge of a person.”[1] It has also been defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.”[2] We can see the effects of implicit emotion in all these definitions.
A contributor on the Merriam-Webster dictionary website, Elise Krumholtz, Coordinator for Student Conflict Resolution Services at Metropolitan State University of Denver, says “Cancel culture is supported as a tool to stop offensive and harmful behavior, while others find it problematic and toxic.” Indeed. Power rarely stops offensive, harmful behavior, it just stops it temporarily, by suppression, and suppression just breeds more revenge and a strong need to retaliate. If there is no retaliation to a comment perceived as offensive, the risk is more depression, anxiety and poor morale. Retaliation never resolves anything, as emotions don’t think, but a more thought out process is more likely to produce better results for all. This can occur through awareness of this process and the desirability of interrupting the emotionally contagious flow of back and forth emotional ping-pong, where people react automatically, emotionally, without thinking. Thinking would cause the ping-pong player in a real ping-pong game to lose but in this situation it is not ping-pong, and we shouldn’t make it an emotional ping-pong game, because thinking it through causes us to win.
The shock or disgust likely experienced by some people when they receive an accusation seems to motivate them to cancel the actual situation. This is because it would take a strong powerful emotion to motivate someone to want to go to such an extreme measure as actually cancelling something. This shock or disgust would be the feeling in the individual involved who perceived an event as being of such a negative magnitude that they call it an atrocity, or despicable. This emotion they seem to feel is so strong that it provides the powerful force to over ride any milder judgment, one that wouldn’t result in a cancel decision. And the power involved in the emotional and social contagion, of having others approve of the decision to cancel, as it is being formed, is so strong that it is intensified and raised to a higher level, befitting an actual decision to cancel.
The emotion of shock or disgust in one individual is fairly strong but by itself in one person it would not be strong enough to have an effect that would produce a strong result of cancelling. To achieve the proper effect would require a stronger emotion. That stronger emotion is achieved through a contagious effect where the emotion is spread through a number of people, usually a large number of people, intensifying the feeling and strengthening the contagious effect, strengthening the feeling itself, the feeling of disgust or shock, which then produces a powerful collective emotion which produces cancel culture.
It may often be thought that a comment such as the thought above, namely, “The shock or disgust likely experienced by some people when they consider what occurs in some situations seems to motivate them to cancel the actual situation” Is a comment registering an opinion against actually cancelling the situation, whatever it may be. That is a conditioned response, that people automatically read a comment to be in favor or in opposition to a movement. In fact, this is not the case, it is an analysis of the situation, done by being objective and neutral, which means there is no opinion registered as to the cancel decision, in a particular instance. People seem to be immediately attracted to a controversy and want to register a vote for or against it. This is what the phenomenon of emotional contagion wants, very quick judgments, purely to move emotions from one person to another, and if a controversy provides the mechanism to do it, then it takes advantage of the opportunity and does it. But, since emotions don’t think, we should not take this as a correct maneuver that would be done in order to arrive at a correct decision.
Emotional contagion enables cancel culture to occur. People respond emotionally in a game of emotional ping-pong, quickly responding to and countering an accusation, like a retort, probably without much thought, taking offense to it. This quick response will usually consist of a quick one-up. When things move quickly like this, in a second or two, emotions are front and centre, because thoughts take more time. So somewhere in this process, probably enabling the receiver to interpret the response as offensive, is an emotion, related to the perception of a narcissistic injury, which as when someone interprets a comment as an accusation which is offensive to one’s ego. It digs deep, so that the person doesn’t have time to interpret it otherwise or respond with more thought, thereby heightening and intensifying their emotion which induces the quickness to respond. Because emotions don’t think, the response is quick, impulsive and likely an attempt to one-up the accusation in the previous response. That person will reply back, immediately, like in a game of ping-pong where the players have no time to think. It is better to learn how to think first, and then act, even though in ping-pong you would lose. But this isn’t ping-pong. It is like the game of curling, where people huddle, think and plan their next shot. Also, it’s up to you to reply, just not quickly, because you can’t rely on someone else to do what we think they should. That just leaves them with control.
This reflects the importance of being like a human duck[3], since a duck has feathers and does not immediately absorb the apparent insult, but thinks about it first. A human duck knows that emotions don’t think and that what is needed here instead is a mind that thinks, in order to come up with a better response that is a little more thought out. This would be a response that says that it is acceptable to disagree, it is acceptable not to reply instantaneously, there is no real danger here. In fact, there is a real risk in a quick emotional reply, because it is prone to be raw and primitive, probably punitive, belligerent and judgmental, increasing the chances for an aggressive conflict, probably physical and possibly violent. No one wins that way. Certainly people avoid the physical, violent behavior when they stick to words, but on the other hand the number of shootings in the U.S. have increased recently so we have to wonder if this is a reflection of increased tension where violence related to an upswell of tense emotions is close to the surface.[4] Let’s face it, deaths or injury by gunshot or any other source is a serious health problem, and increased tension relates directly to health and emotional contagion.
We see in these definitions how implicit emotions are an important part of this phenomenon. When we don’t talk about emotions, how to deal with them, and how emotional contagion is part of the problem, we don’t move far enough toward a solution and the problem continues, as it has. When people are quick to judge and slow to question, they are using the fast thinking defined by Daniel Kahneman, in his book, Thinking: Fast and Slow[5], as from System 1 thinking, which is gut-level and effortless, depending on implicit emotion where the biases and prejudices reside inside us among repressed and suppressed emotions in the subconscious. If they are quick to judge, they are thinking emotionally, probably being in emotion mind[6], being influenced by the implicit emotion that carries prejudice and negative judgments. They haven’t been thought out with clarity and full perspective. This is because the cognitive process is infected by the emotional infection brought out when suppressed anger and jealousy are released, enabling the quick negative judgment to be made. This is an indication of the emotions reacting, but emotions don’t think. And this takes thinking to do it effectively, cooperatively, since cooperation gets better results for all. But there needs to be trust for cooperation to occur and we are far from that. Instead, fear and suspicion are contagious and spread throughout society, being very active in the psychological underground.
To completely reject someone because they have done something that offends another person is reacting from emotion. They are seeking control to gain revenge for the other person having been offensive. Do we want emotions to decide our best reaction when, after all, emotions don’t think? Being offended does not mean that the individual is correct to be offended. For example, some people are offended if you call them red-heads if their hair is red[7]. Being offended does not automatically give people power to take control, but they take it anyway. They have probably felt dismissed in life at other times and this resentment builds up so they seek revenge to dismiss the other person through cancelling them. That is showing destructive power. Canceling is more powerful than suspending them or fining them. Somewhere the person has decided it is better to be destructive and completely reject them by cancelling them. But that didn’t come from constructive thinking, it came from emotional thinking and a need for revenge and control.
It is better to discuss and communicate effectively. Some people, however, may interpret comments and actions from others correctly as they have actually been rejected and some have been dismissed. Others may have interpreted relatively neutral comments as being negative, since they were expecting a positive comment that didn’t come. In these cases they decide prematurely that the other person won’t listen so they decide, after no more than two seconds of thought, to react back angrily. They may feel that they lose if they don’t react back quickly. This can start the emotional ping-pong game, quick back and forth retorts and volleys of power to one-up each other, with a delay of less than five seconds between replies. This is not effective and is just giving in to emotional contagion, when emotions don’t think. In emotional contagion, emotions are transferred from one person to another, and when two people are furious and enraged at each other, they pick up that anger from the other person and it escalates. Each person probably came to the issue with some pent-up anger from previous issues or suppressed anger that was part of the emotional residue they carried from the past, so they were ripe to absorb more anger from someone else, and/or to interpret treatment toward them as negative, and find fault and be angry. Some people come looking for a fight, but this doesn’t have to be conscious. An emotion can’t be transferred to another person unless that other person has the same feeling, even if it is much less, and when another person was angry they each picked it up because it was contagious. When aggressive emotions take over, we want power, and can get destructive.
The trick here is to recognize that, in a way, all of us have a trigger point. The trick is to recognize when someone is becoming angry, either toward us, or someone else, and disarm that anger. The way to disarm the anger is first, to be aware of the anger coming toward us, when someone is angry at us, or someone else. Then second, to avoid letting that anger trigger something inside us, a primitive (from cave man days) automatic response to confrontation that says fight. Instead, this requires the realization that the other person probably wants a fight, consciously or unconsciously, so why give them what they want? Ignore it. Don’t fight. Then, use rational thinking to think about it in a different way. The APA says that it is best to remind yourself that the world is “not out to get you,” you’re just experiencing some of the rough spots of daily life.[8] We all go through this. It is temporary. When you are angry, that’s all you see and feel, the triggers of your anger and how angry you think you should be. The present moment feels like it has been there forever and defines your life. But it doesn’t, the anger blinds you. And the anger is only temporary. It takes slower, logical thinking to realize that.
Then you could acknowledge that you are not perfect, (no one is) and that you may have made a mistake, and ask the person to describe what happened. You may need to apologize, but remember, that apologizing doesn’t mean you are admitting guilt, you are however sorry that the other person is feeling pain. The idea here is to keep a mixture of reflecting back to the other person that you may have made a mistake, empathize with their angry feelings, so that their anger is disarmed or at least lowered. If you know you didn’t make a mistake, the point here is not to prove you are right. It is better to regard this as possibly the result of some type of unfulfilled emotional need on the other person’s part, or some quirk they have. We all have quirks. This doesn’t mean the other person is mentally ill. Possibly there was emotional contagion, likely meaning there is some unfilled emotional need, that may produce the quirk. Most of us have some unfilled emotional need. It may be helpful to figure out ways of resolving the unfulfilled emotional need. Providing empathy and normalizing their anger, viewing anger as a normal emotion, are ways to do that.
[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cancel%20Culture
[2] “Cancel culture.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cancel%20culture. Accessed 12 Jul. 2021.
[3] Here I take the liberty of asking readers to draw up a cartoon figure in their mind of a human duck, where the duck will not retort immediately, will not absorb the offender’s hurtful emotions, like a human sponge might, and responds thoughtfully, with a more thought-out thought instead.
[4] Thebault, R., Fox, J. and Ba Tran, A. 2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades. So far, 2021 is worse. Washington Post. June 14, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/14/2021-gun-violence/
[5] Kahneman, D. Thinking, Fast and Slow,
[6] Linehan, M. DBT Skills Training Manual. 2nd ed. Guilford Press, New York 2015.
[7] Apologies to all people with red hair. Many nouns used as labels to describe a person can be offensive.
[8] American Psychological Association. Controlling anger before it controls you. https://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control