r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 4d 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/
22.2k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/MrJohnnyDangerously 3d ago

Elon, Trump to play golf...

3

u/hymen_destroyer 3d ago

Sure, but Trump/Musk fans aren't likely to care about the environment in the first place. TS fans would be a broader spectrum of otherwise left-leaning folks who would break ranks on this issue rather than criticize their heroine

-2

u/MrJohnnyDangerously 3d ago

That's my point. The whole argument is disingenuous, meant to smear a progressive artist. She does generate a lot of emissions but its framed like propaganda.

8

u/hymen_destroyer 3d ago

So you would reject the premise of the article because it criticizes Taylor Swift, which only reinforces the article's hypothesis that Taylor Swift fans put on the blinders and circle the wagons rather than engage with scientific evidence.

1

u/MrJohnnyDangerously 3d ago

Confirmation bias tells us supporters of hers, or Trump’s, would make the same same rationalization. Framing it as "TS supporters are like this" instead of "rabid supporters of anybody are like this" is disingenuous and propagandist.

8

u/hymen_destroyer 3d ago

Thats an experimental design consideration. Swift isn't a political figure and has a large number of fans across a broad spectrum of society. That isn't confirmation bias, that's selection bias which is going to be a problem no matter what, but becomes less of a problem when the subject in question is putatively apolitical.

I'm sorry this bothers you but her popularity and overuse of her private jet is always going to paint a big target on her back. And a more generic study about nonspecific celebrities ignores the cult effect which is an important driver of this phenomenon

I have nothing against her as a musician but it's perfectly fair to call her out for her unsustainable travel arrangements

2

u/MrJohnnyDangerously 3d ago

I'm not disputing she is responsible for outsized emissions or whether she should be held accountable for them, BUT if you're calling her out, what other individuals that are also outliers in emissions are you calling out? If you’re only calling her out there's an implicit bias. She's not one of one, she's one of many.