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Weekly Doses of Pop-up Psych

We all make cringey mistakes and deserve to move on, rather than feel confused or regretful after an icky social situation. Each week, I will dissect a murky social, life cycle, or pop culture topic to help you understand, learn, and move on. As a former academic, I am a super-picky consumer of research (and you should be too) as well as the content I create and share, so those new solutions, data and/or additional resources have certainly met my approval.

Getting Cancelled vs. Being Held Accountable: When Does it Cross the Line?

Most of us have at least one really bad restaurant experience. Whether it was the terrible quality of the food, service, atmosphere, or all of the above, we stayed away forever. It was one of those poor experiences that was rough enough to discourage other people from eating there through a dramatic and detailed tangent on social media.

 

Sound familiar? On one hand, the you are holding the restaurant accountable for the lousy meal and service, but on the other hand, it crosses the line into a cancelation attempt when it was shared on social media.

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Most people have poor experiences with a brand, especially when a product or service did not meet their expectations.  Products are returned or thrown away and clients either find other experts to fulfill their service needs or reject brands who don’t align with their own values. When consumers saw a lack of power, competence, and warmth in the brand, it influenced an anxious and avoidant attachment for consumers of that brand, implying that it is easy to abandon it. No brands or businesses are perfect, and consumers certainly have the free will to choose who they support or boycott based services, and values, which gives consumers the upper hand.

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Holding Accountable

Cancellation Attempt

  • Situation shared privately among an inner circle by word-of-mouth.

  • Shared verbally without a permanent footprint so a brand’s mistakes are not documented forever.

  • Individual and inner circle boycotts brand or discontinues to work with brand.

  • Feedback is given directly and privately to the brand about the experience.

  • More likely to show their real faces and use actual names.

  • Intention is for improvement.

  • Situation shared publicly through digital communication.

  • Imprinted in the world wide web, so the incident is documented and archived forever.

  • Online communities dehumanize brands and publicly share hateful messages.

  • Feedback is shared online with all contacts rather than with the brand directly.

  • Hidden behind avatars and screen names to conceal their identities.

  • Intention is to harm, shame, bully, and humiliate.

Holding accountable without cancellation

  

The most courageous thing you can do is contact the business or brand directly to provide them honest feedback about your experience. You do not know what is going on behind the scenes, so your feedback might be a gift that could make or break the business. Whereas the easy, but cowardly way to handle it is hide behind a fake identity and trash talk the brand or business. At the end of the day, do we really want to invite harm to them? If you answered yes, then it’s time to check in with yourself. 

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Hi, Beautiful Readers! Thank you for reading this! I'm Dr. Joanne Broder, Media Psychologist, Author, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Please consider me to help you write your memoir, blogs, speeches, e-books, as well as coach you on your dissertation or thesis.  Click here so we can connect!

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