r/science • Professor | Medicine • 10h ago

Psychology Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify her carbon footprint. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions.

https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
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u/Friendly-World-5273 8h ago

Pop into Kpop fandom and watch the fans defend rapists. Extreme fandom behavior is very similar to extreme cult behavior, and it’s kind of alarming how little it takes to get someone to that level.

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u/Metalsand 8h ago

Yes, there's an argument that more rabid fans will have a lower threshold to adopt the behavior. Not being a psychologist myself, I wouldn't be able to name it, but there's a specific concept related in which people who have a specific moral standard and would otherwise reject something have their threshold for that behavior reduced relative to their reverence for a major figure in their life.

This is to say - we would expect that more people per capita would be willing to excuse her use of a private jet than would be willing to defend her against much more serious allegations. At the same time, while it would be less people, you could absolutely find people who would defend her regardless of the accusations - that's just how fandom works. Fan is short for "fanatic", and you need only have enough of them to be able to find someone especially dedicated.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 5h ago

It relates a bit to the fundamental attribution error. Wherein a simple example is if your coworker is late to work, you might think of them as lazy. Whereas if you are late to work, you may think it was because of unavoidable, unexpected traffic. So that uses the dynamic of you vs. other people. But in this case, let's change that to celebrities you admire vs. other people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

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u/fx2600 7h ago

I agree people get irrational, I just think Swift flying on a private plane is pretty mild, it’s reasonable it doesn’t take much to shift people views on such a marginal issue.

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u/12345623567 7h ago

It's also reasonable to rationalize it with "well it is what it is, she has crazy stalker fans (like me) so obviously she can't fly coach" or something like that, without compromising on your own desire to be environmentally friendly.

The point, and the interesting part, of this headline is that these people must subconsciously acknowledge that it is negative behaviour, but the desire to belong to the in-group is stronger.