About cancel culture: Who cancels whom the most?

The evils of cancel culture appears to be an important issue in this election. Some people believe that liberals cancel conservatives more than vice versa. The bickering is endless. From what I have seen so far, the bickering is not backed up by research data. Instead, the arguments boil down to personal opinions based on personal experience, anecdotal examples and/or mostly partisan dark free speech. A key issue is assessing whether one kind of cancellation, e.g., liberal students blocking a conservative speaker on campus, is the same, better or worse than another, e.g., Republican election deniers firing RNC employees who refuse to say the 2020 election was stolen. Not all cancellations are necessarily anti-democratic. Cancelling liars and divisive rabble rousers strikes me as generally more good for the public interest and democracy than harmful.

My suspicion was that authoritarian conservatives (ACs) probably cancelled more than democratic liberals (DLs). In part, that was based on a personal belief that ACs were generally more rigid, biased and ideological about politics and people than DLs. But that tentative personal belief was not based on any empirical research data I could recall. It was just anecdotal.

A question to AI started my inquiry:

Q: In society generally, are liberals or active in cancelling conservatives than conservatives are in cancelling liberals?

A: Based on the provided search results, there is no clear evidence that either liberals or conservatives are more active in “cancelling” the other side. The search results focus on comparing the general political and social views of liberals and conservatives, but do not directly address the issue of “cancelling” or attempting to silence opposing viewpoints.

The search results highlight the key differences between liberal and conservative ideologies, such as their contrasting views on the role of government, economic policies, social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, and their preferred living environments (urban vs. rural). However, none of the results specifically discuss the prevalence or extent of “cancelling” behavior from either side of the political spectrum.

If that is true, but it may not be, then my current assessment is correct that the bickering about this is mostly opinion or dark free speech, but not based on empirical research data.

A 2023 political science research paper comments about perceptions of cancel culture by conservative and liberal academics:

In recent years, a progressive “cancel culture” in society, right-wing politicians and commentators claim, has silenced alternative perspectives, ostracized contrarians, and eviscerated robust intellectual debate, with college campuses at the vanguard of this development. These arguments can be dismissed as rhetorical dog whistles devoid of substantive meaning, myths designed to fire up the MAGA faithful, outrage progressives, and distract from urgent real-world problems. Given heated contention, however, something more fundamental may be at work. To understand this phenomenon, the opening section defines the core concept and theorizes that perceptions of this phenomenon are likely to depend upon how far individual values fit the dominant group culture. Within academia, scholars most likely to perceive “silencing” are mismatched or noncongruent cases, where they are “fish-out-of-water.”

Social situation: Fish out of water feel  

cancelled more than fish in water

Data are derived from a global survey, the World of Political Science, 2019, involving almost 2500 scholars studying or working in over 100 countries. The next section describes the results. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and considers their broader implications. Overall, the evidence confirms the “fish-out-of-water” congruence thesis. As predicted, in post-industrial societies, characterized by predominately liberal social cultures, like the US, Sweden, and UK, right-wing scholars were most likely to perceive that they faced an increasingly chilly climate. By contrast, in developing societies characterized by more traditional moral cultures, like Nigeria, it was leftwing scholars who reported that a cancel culture had worsened. This contrast is consistent with Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence thesis, where mainstream values in any group gradually flourish to become the predominant culture, while, due to social pressures, dissenting minority voices become muted. The ratchet effect eventually muffles contrarians. The evidence suggests that the cancel culture is not simply a rhetorical myth; scholars may be less willing to speak up to defend their moral beliefs if they believe that their views are not widely shared by colleagues or the wider society to which they belong.

That data is limited to academics, not people outside academia. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to think that contrarian non-academics react similarly to some extent when faced with a society, group or personal situation that is mostly in opposition to their beliefs. Situational behavior is a very important aspect of the human condition. 

American society today is split roughly in half by two deeply differing and clashing mindsets, generally secular, DL and generally religious, AC. Non-authoritarian conservatism, roughly correlated with opposition to Trump, and authoritarian liberal, seem to be small minority influences. Dominance of the DL mindset is generally (but not always) centered in urban areas and AC generally rural (but not always).

Partisan ideology and the degree that individuals are ideologically biased could lead to partisan bias and partisan cancel behavior. A 2019 research paper found equal bias among liberals and conservatives. But another paper criticized that research as flawed and unreliable. The research I looked at for this post is incomprehensible to me. Other factors such as false memories and personality traits complicate the research. A 2022 paper reflects the messy complexity of political bias research, e.g., propensity to believe in false memories is partisan biased: 

While cognitive psychologists have learned a great deal about people’s propensity for constructing and acting on false memories, the connection between false memories and politics remains understudied. If partisan bias guides the adoption of beliefs and colors one’s interpretation of new events and information, so too might it prove powerful enough to fabricate memories of political circumstances. Across two studies, we first distinguish false memories from false beliefs and expressive responses; false political memories appear to be genuine and subject to partisan bias. We also examine the political and psychological correlates of false memories. Nearly a third of respondents reported remembering a fabricated or factually altered political event, with many going so far as to convey the circumstances under which they “heard about” the event. False- memory recall is correlated with the strength of partisan attachments, interest in politics, and participation, as well as narcissism, conspiratorial thinking, and cognitive ability.

As he reported on both December 4, 2001, and January 5, 2002, George W. Bush clearly remembers watching footage of the first plane strike the Twin Towers on 9/11. On December 20, 2001, though, he made no mention of watching this footage and instead remembered that adviser Karl Rove informed him that the first plane had struck the towers. History tells us that Bush’s memory of watching footage of the first crash is inaccurate; only amateur footage of it exists, and it was not available on the morning of the attacks. While some suspect that Bush was lying, it is likelier that he simply possesses a false memory of the events of the morning of 9/11, memories that he genuinely believes to be true (Greenberg, 2004). He can hardly be blamed for this. False memory is a phenomenon that afflicts all people (Nichols & Loftus, 2019).

This 2023 paper indicates that bias seems to highly correlate with partisanship in terms of pro-democracy vs (unconscious) anti-democracy partisanship. That sometimes correlates with cancelling opposition, e.g., restricting civil liberties:

Democracy often confronts citizens with a dilemma: stand firm on democracy while losing out on policy or accept undemocratic behavior and gain politically. Existing literature demonstrates that citizens generally choose the latter—and that they do so deliberately. Yet there is an alternative possibility. Citizens can avoid this uncomfortable dilemma altogether by rationalizing their understandings of democracy. When a politician advances undesired policies without violating democratic rules and norms, people find ways to perceive the behavior as undemocratic. When a politician acts undemocratically to promote desired policies, citizens muster up arguments for considering it democratic. Original survey experiments in the United States, and 22 democracies worldwide, provide strong support for this argument. It is thus not deliberate acceptance, but a fundamentally different perceptual logic that drives the widespread approval of undemocratic behavior in today’s democracies.

[A]ccording to existing research, citizens are willing to accept undemocratic behavior if they stand to gain from it politically. When asked in abstract terms, they profess to hold sincere democratic values, but when asked in more specific terms, they merely act as “questionnaire democrats”: they are not willing to tolerate groups they dislike; they are willing to restrict civil liberties for those they disagree with politically; and they are likely to vote for an undemocratic candidate as long as that candidate offers policies they desire. When policy considerations conflict with democratic values, citizens often end up on the undemocratic side of the equation. (emphasis added)

In conclusion, I still do not know if DLs cancel more than ACs. That arguably depends on how cancellation is defined and assessed. I still suspect that in America today (i) ACs do more cancelling than DLs, and/or (ii) the cancelling that ACs do is more important relative to democracy and the public interest than the cancelling that DLs do. Maybe quality is more important than quantity in assessing who does more.