2 Reactions People Have To Celebrities Who Cheat, By A Psychologist
When cheating scandals dominate headlines or flood social media, they tend to stir up a wide range of public emotions. Some people may react with intense outrage. On the other hand, others seem surprisingly indifferent or even unfazed.
Intense emotional investment in any celebrity's life is not random. Many fans develop strong parasocial relationships and tend to put celebrities on pedestals, admire them and even trust them like close friends. So, when those public figures betray expectations, it can feel deeply personal.
While anger is a common reaction, parasocial emotional closeness isn't the only determining factor in how people react to these scandals. A 2024 study published in Behavioral Sciences explains why some people tend to be unfazed by such news.
Researchers set out to explore why public reactions to celebrity infidelity vary so widely. To examine this, they surveyed over 1100 Japanese adults across different age groups and regions.
What set the study apart was that unlike earlier studies that relied on hypothetical scenarios, this one examined real-life celebrity cheating scandals that had sparked massive online backlash in Japan.
The researchers specifically investigated how people's 'belief in a just world' (BJW), that is, the idea that people get what they deserve, is related to their emotional responses and tendency to blame the celebrities involved.
This study is among the first to reveal that a belief in a just world may actually reduce condemnation of high-status individuals in morally unambiguous situations like cheating.
Here are two factors that shape how we judge celebrity infidelity, according to the 2024 study.
1. Believing The World Is Fair Can Soften Moral Outrage
One of the main aims of the study was to examine how a person's belief in a just world (BJW) influences their reaction to celebrity infidelity.
Belief in a just world is the psychological tendency to believe that people generally get what they deserve, wherein good people are rewarded and bad people are punished.
This belief often serves as a justice motivation, pushing people to restore moral balance when they witness wrongdoing.
While initially the researchers expected that individuals with a strong belief ina just world would show more outrage toward celebrities caught cheating, the results showed otherwise.
Naturally, the researchers assumed that immoral behavior like infidelity violates someone's belief in a fair world, which can create psychological discomfort. So, people may feel compelled to condemn the wrongdoer to restore a sense of justice.
However, the researchers found that people with a stronger belief in a just world reported lower levels of anger, disgust and blame toward the cheating celebrities.
BJW, in fact, had a negative direct effect on blame. Moreover, there was also an indirect effect. It reduced negative emotions, which in turn reduced the tendency to assign blame.
In short, this belief actually dampens emotional reactions, which then leads to a more forgiving or indifferent stance.
The study suggests that when infidelity is not seen as a criminal act (as is the case in Japan, where it's considered a private moral issue), people with a strong belief in a just world may not see it as a threat to justice.
They may tend to, instead, interpret the celebrity's status like the wealth, success and fame, as a sign that they are fundamentally 'good' or 'deserving.' As a result, they feel less compelled to condemn them.
On the contrary, this also implies that people who don't hold a strong belief in a just world may be more likely to see infidelity as a serious wrongdoing.
They may even demand accountability because they don't assume things will automatically balance out and hence, may feel a stronger need to express outrage or publicly condemn the celebrity to restore some sense of justice.
These findings challenge the assumption that justice-oriented beliefs always lead to punishment or moral outrage. Ultimately, this shows that our sense of justice doesn't just shape what we judge but also whether we feel the need to judge at all.
2. Strong Emotions Drive Harsh Judgements
While BJW plays a strong role in shaping how you view cheating scandals, the study also found that raw emotional reactions, especially anger and disgust, are also one of the strongest predictors of public condemnation.
Researchers asked participants in the research to rate how they typically feel about infidelity, focusing on three key emotional responses: anger, disgust and a sense of feeling dirty. This was again measured with regard to real-life celebrity cheating scandals.
Researchers found that participants who felt more intense negative emotions when thinking about infidelity were much more likely to blame the celebrities involved.
This shows that moral judgment is often emotion-driven rather than rational. People tend to react first with their gut when they are feeling disgusted or morally repulsed. It is only later that they justify those feelings with logic or reasoning.
In fact, the study found that these emotions acted as a direct pathway to blame. The stronger the emotional reaction was, the harsher the judgment was. They even found that people with a lower belief in a just world still showed high levels of blame when negative emotions were present.
This indicates that even if someone doesn't think of infidelity as a legal or societal issue, their emotional response can still push them to publicly condemn the behavior. This is especially true when that betrayal feels deeply personal or morally offensive.
When it comes to infidelity, it's not always what you think, but more about what you feel first, which can eventually fuel the fire for the way you react to a celebrity scandal.
Every Story Doesn't Need Your Reaction
While these stories may flood your feed and even dominate conversations with friends or family, it's important to remember that you see only fragments of a much larger picture.
No matter what the reasoning behind your judgment is, it can still miss the mark and be partly, sometimes even entirely, wrong. This is not because the act is justified, but because no matter how personal it feels, you don't know the full context.
More importantly, it's worth checking in with yourself if the energy you're spending on someone else's choices is bringing you clarity or just creating more noise. While it's human to react, not every story deserves space in your mind.
Sometimes, the wisest thing you can do is protect your peace and step back from what was never yours to carry.
Curious how emotionally invested you are in celebrity lives? Take this science-backed test to find out: Celebrity Attitude Scale
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Condé Nast Traveler
15 hours ago
- Condé Nast Traveler
In Okinawa, the Enduring Legacy of Bingata Textiles
This is part of a collection of stories spotlighting deeply rooted—yet sometimes less exposed—crafts hubs around the world and how to experience them. Read more here. At Chinen Bingata laboratory on the western edge of Naha in Japan's Okinawa prefecture, the 10th-generation bingata artist Toma Chinen is leaning over a piece of fabric that depicts hibiscus flowers on a yellow canvas. In the brightly lit, airy space, stacked rows of colorful textiles are stretched to dry along the walls. At a long, narrow table, a woman carves an ornate design of geese and peonies into a stencil, using a rectangle of dried tofu as a cutting board. Another paints a koi fish in a medley of purple, blue, and pink, dipping her short, stubby brush into red pigment mixed with soy milk. The artisans' slow movements look like a meditative dance. Chinen explains that the two-to-three-month process, which includes masking parts of the textile with a rice-based resist-dye paste, has barely changed since the time of the Ryukyu Kingdom, the trading nation with its own language, customs, and culture that flourished in Okinawa for 450 years beginning in the 15th century. While Japan is known for its ceramics, silks, and washi papers, in Okinawa the lesser-known stencil dyeing tradition of bingata reigns supreme. The prefecture has become popular for its pristine beaches and the healthy lifestyle that has made it one of the world's five designated 'Blue Zones,' but its endemic craft is also a key to its identity. Drawing inspiration from imported textiles that use resist-dye techniques like Chinese nankeen indigo and Indonesian batik, bingata originated as part of the wardrobe of Ryukyu royals. But after Japan annexed the kingdom in 1879, the practice declined. The 1945 Battle of Okinawa, in addition to costing more than 100,000 civilian lives, destroyed most bingata dyes and stencils. But after the war, a handful of artisans sought to revive the craft. Today their descendants are continuing their work. Indigo dyeing at Chinen Bingata Laboratory Chinen Bingata Laboratory The roof of Shurijo Castle in Naha Andrew Faulk As I walk through the warm, humid air of downtown Naha, the legacy of the war is still evident. While aerial views of Okinawa are a shock of turquoise waters and white-sand beaches, on the ground, Naha offers an unexpected lesson in Brutalist architecture—the product of a post–World War II reconstruction effort that rebuilt the flattened city using affordable material of the era. I make my way down the palm-tree-lined Kokusai-dori, a popular shopping street, past terra-cotta and porcelain pairs of male and female Shisa statues that ward off evil at every door and bottles of medicinal habushu liquor with vipers coiled at the bottom. Everywhere I turn, textiles with flower, plant, fish, and bird motifs line shelves. Bingata is now a common sight in Okinawan souvenir stores, but to see the skill behind the craft, I head to Eiichi Shiroma's workshop. An artisan hand-paints a textile Chinen Bingata Laboratory Shiroma is a 16th-generation artisan who operates his three-story studio near Naha's main landmark, the Ryukyu-era Shurijo Castle, in the same space where his grandfather Eiki Shiroma worked. As we pass shelves lined with stencils and brushes, Shiroma tells me his grandfather returned to practicing bingata two years after the war, while still in a US prison camp. The Shiromas, along with the Chinens, had been just one of three original families commissioned by the Ryukyu court to make the royal cloth. Driven by that legacy, Eiki used whatever tools he could find (flour sacks for canvases, clock hands as stencil-carving tools, lipstick as dye) to make bingata holiday cards for American soldiers. 'He wanted to protect Ryukyu culture,' says Eiichi. Over at Yuki Miyagi's studio in Nakijin, a quiet oceanside village in northern Okinawa, a single bingata strip in large floral patterns is stretched across the length of the galley-like room. Unlike Shiroma and Chinen, Miyagi is a solo artist. After studying textiles at university in her native Tohoku region, she moved to Okinawa to train under Sekigen Chinen, another descendant of the three original bingata families. 'I'm drawn to the beauty of bingata,' Miyagi tells me. 'Watching the vivid colors emerge on white silk is truly magical.' Her work is sold at Jumonjiya, Naha's oldest kimono shop, which has been selling ceremonial and casual wear for more than a century. While the previous location was destroyed during the war, the current iteration has operated on Kokusai-dori for the past four decades. Cherry blossom season in Naha, the capital of Okinawa prefecture Getty An intricately patterned bingata kimono from artist Toma Chinen's Okinawa workshop Chinen Bingata Laboratory Toma Chinen's appointment-only studio employs around 10 artisans to produce his coveted bingata kimonos, which have wait times of up to a year. Most Okinawan bingata makers derive their livelihoods from individual and wholesale kimono orders from mainland Japan, but Chinen, who has been practicing bingata since he was 16, hopes more people around the world will discover the craft. 'Bingata is not just about the cloth,' he tells me. 'It's about the connection with other people and nations through trade.' During Ryukyu times, he points out, dyes used not only indigenous local ingredients like the bark of the native fukugi tree but also foreign imports like cochineal, an insect native to South America. For Chinen, Ryukyu artisans were akin to diplomats, improving on foreign techniques and exporting their creations throughout the world, much as he seeks to do today. 'Bingata has survived because of its story,' he says. Near the end of my trip, I return to Kokusai-dori to visit Keystone, a fine handicrafts store across the road from Kuninda, a 30-seat Ryukyu cuisine tasting room. Past the shelves of deep-blue and gray ceramics, a burst of color catches my eye. As a final souvenir I purchase a striking purse with a red-winged phoenix, a mythical bird of Chinese origin often found in bingata patterns, dancing joyously among purple peonies on a rich yellow canvas. When I carry it back home, I think about Eiichi Shiroma's parting words. 'Okinawa is a small island and our people have faced severe hardships, but they've accepted what happened, changing this past into something positive. Through bingata, I want my children to understand that the world is beautiful.' This article appeared in the September/October 2025 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Families mourn 40 years since deadly Japan Airlines crash
Family members of victims in the world's deadliest single-aircraft accident hiked Tuesday to the mountainous site in Japan where the plane went down, as the country marked 40 years since the tragedy that killed 520 people. On August 12, 1985, the doomed Boeing 747 was around 40 minutes into an hour-long flight from Tokyo to Osaka, when it crashed into a mountain about 120 kilometres (75 miles) northwest of the capital. Tuesday saw hundreds of people -- including bereaved families and friends -- hike the trails up to the cenotaph erected on Mount Osutaka where the jet crashed. Among them was a woman who lost her younger brother in the accident. "I want to tell him that all of his family members are alive, with his soul on our shoulders", she told broadcaster Fuji TV. "We're doing our best to live our lives". Japan Airlines Flight 123 lost control soon after take-off, with a loud noise heard about 10 minutes into the trip and an emergency declared, before shaking violently and crashing. The plane was almost full, with many holidaymakers flying back to their hometowns during Japan's "obon" mid-summer festival. In the end, 505 passengers -- including a dozen infants -- and 15 crew members perished. Just four passengers survived. Imperfect repairs to the aircraft's rear bulkhead by Boeing engineers seven years earlier -- coupled with JAL's subsequent lack of oversight -- were blamed for the accident. Numerous, tiny cracks on the bulkhead -- unnoticed on prior flights -- burst, destroying a tail fin, rupturing hydraulic systems and sending the plane hurtling downward. The world's worst airline disaster was the 1977 runway collision of two 747s on Tenerife in the Canary Islands that left 583 dead. More recently in Japan, a near-catastrophic collision occurred at Haneda airport between a Japan Airlines aircraft and a smaller coast guard plane in January 2024. All 379 people on board the JAL Airbus escaped just before the aircraft was engulfed in flames, but five of the six people on the smaller aircraft died. tmo/aph/cwl
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
The forgotten story of the world's deadliest plane crash
Tragedy generally hits hardest close to home, where the places and locations in question can trigger grief and trauma long after the initial event has slipped queasily into the past. Which might explain why the collective British memory does not easily recall the deadliest plane crash of all time: a catastrophe that took place more than 8,000 miles away, on the other side of the planet, but claimed 520 lives. It did so an exact 40 years ago today, on August 12 1985, on a wild mountainside, 60 miles north-west of Tokyo. The fate of Flight 123 is certainly not forgotten in Japan, where the scarring is still visible (there will be commemorations at the crash site today, as there are every year). True, its loss of life did not match the 583 victims of the Tenerife Air Disaster of March 27 1977, where two Boeing 747s collided on the runway on the largest of the Canary Islands. Nor does it equate to the unique circumstances of the two Boeing 767s flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. But Flight 123 holds its own dark position in the annals of aviation – as the deadliest crash involving a single aircraft. A ticking time bomb Perhaps inevitably, with a fatality count of such awful weight, that aircraft was also a 747 – specifically a 747 SR-46, toiling away for Japan Airlines (JAL). 'SR' stands for 'short range', with the plane part of the boom in domestic flights in the Land of the Rising Sun that took hold in the early 1970s. Demand was so high that, in 1972, JAL placed an order with Boeing for a bespoke version of the 'Jumbo Jet' – one adapted for maximum passenger capacity, but with strengthened body structure and landing gear able to cope with the regular take-offs and landings (and considerable stress) inherent in short-haul flying. So it was that the 747 SR-46 emerged from Boeing's Seattle plant with space for 498 travellers; a figure that would rise to 550 after further modification. It made its first commercial flight, for JAL, on October 7 1973. JA8119 – to use its registration number – arrived in the JAL fleet in 1974, and promptly became a workhorse. By the time of its demise in 1985, it had chalked up 25,000 hours of flying, and 18,800 flights; the majority of them quick trips back and forth between Tokyo and Japan's other major cities. Flight 123 – a scheduled service from Haneda Airport in the capital to Itami Airport in Osaka, which should have taken one hour – was the fifth of six short hops it was due to make that day. However, the cause of the disaster was not rooted in that summer afternoon in the mid-1980s. It had been planted seven years earlier – and with a grim symmetry, on the same route. On June 2 1978, JA8119 was damaged by a heavy touch-down at Itami. The landing was so jarring that the 747's tail hit the runway (a 'tailstrike') – so forcefully that this caused cracking in the rear bulkhead, a vital component of any plane's pressurisation system. The breakage was repaired, swiftly but – it would transpire – insufficiently. JA8119 had 8,830 hours on its log at the time of the strike, and would fly on, without much further incident, for 16,170 more. Yet deep within its fuselage, a clock was ticking. The death toll from the crash was tragically inflated by unfortunate timing: August 12 1985 fell within Obon season – a celebration of ancestral spirits, effectively Japan's 'Day of the Dead', which moves around the calendar, but generally sees the Japanese travel home in great numbers to spend time with loved ones. So it was that JA8119 was full of families for its early-evening departure. The records indicate that, of the 524 passengers and crew on board, 502 were Japanese. They included one notable celebrity – the 43-year-old singer and actor, Kyu Sakamoto. 32 unthinkable minutes JA8119 took off from Haneda at 6.12pm, a little behind schedule. For the next 12 minutes, it proceeded as normal. But at 6.24pm, as the 747 SR-46 crossed the coastal waters of Sagami Bay, 50 miles south-west of Tokyo, the decade-old patch-up job on its rear bulkhead finally failed. The plane suffered an explosive decompression which brought down the ceiling at the back of the economy cabin, severed all four hydraulic lines and knocked out the vertical stabiliser. At a stroke, the jet was all but uncontrollable. At the opposite end of the aircraft, Captain Masami Takahama – a 49-year-old pilot of significant experience – remained calm. A distress call was put out; an emergency plan to turn Flight 123 around and return to Haneda was discussed. But it soon became clear that JA8119 was incapable of nuanced manoeuvre. Cockpit recordings suggest its crew was already beginning to suffer from hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the decompressing jet leading to slow answers and an audible difficulty in comprehending instructions. In the 21 minutes which followed the explosion, JA8119 flew erratically, lurching and rolling, gaining and losing altitude – and, crucially, swerving north, so that it was back over land. Its final 11 minutes were a desperate struggle. By 6.45pm, the jet was descending rapidly, had plunged to 13,500ft (4,100m), and was veering towards high mountains. At 6.46pm, Takahama was heard to utter the weary words: 'This may be hopeless.' At 6.49pm, there was a brief stall, at 9,000ft (2,700m). And while this was corrected, seven minutes later, at 6.56pm, JA8119 clipped a ridge on 1,979m Mount Takamagahara in Japan's central Gunma Prefecture. The collision dislodged the end third of the right wing, and two of the four engines. Now conclusively disabled, the 747 flipped onto its back, struck a second ridge, and exploded. The impact was so violent that it registered on the seismometer at the Shin-Etsu Earthquake Observatory, 100 miles away. It is impossible to say how many people were still alive in the immediate aftermath of the crash, because the rescue mission was as poorly executed as the repair work that had led to the disaster. It was still daytime when JA8119 went into the mountain, but as the light faded, a Japanese military helicopter did a cursory scan of the site, and reported no obvious signs of life. With night imminent, and the terrain challenging, paramedics did not attempt to reach the wreckage until the following morning. Interviewed in her hospital bed, Yumi Ochiai, an off-duty flight attendant who was one of just four survivors – all female; all of whom had been sitting on the left hand side of the cabin, between rows 54 and 60 – remembered seeing lights and listening to the noise of rotor blades after waking up in the charred remains of the plane. She expected help to arrive, she said, but the only sounds she heard for the next few hours were the cries of the injured and dying. The fallout The government response was rather more clear-eyed. The official inquiry, which released its findings on June 19 1987, placed the blame on the inadequate repair in 1978. By that point, JAL president Yasumoto Takagi had already lost his job; he tendered his resignation on August 24 1985, less than a fortnight after the crash. Sadly, the catastrophe claimed two further victims as its aftershocks reverberated around Japan. Two JAL employees – maintenance manager Hiroo Tominaga, and engineer Susumu Tajima, who had inspected JA8119 after the tailstrike incident, and had declared it airworthy – took their own lives, buckling beneath the psychological burden of the disaster. Forty years on, the crash site is home to a memorial; two unadorned stone triangles, set against the slope. The relatives of the dead gather there every August 12, perhaps taking small consolation from Mount Takamagahara's place in Japanese folklore as a parallel to Greece's Mount Olympus; a heavenly home of the gods. There are more tangible echoes as well. Not least the Safety Promotion Center, a museum attached to Haneda Airport, which examines the causes of the disaster, and the lessons to be learnt from it. Among its artefacts are fragments of the plane, and farewell letters written by its passengers in the 32 unthinkable minutes when they were probably aware that they were going to die. JAL has recovered to be Japan's second biggest airline, but suffered an inevitable decline in the wake of Flight 123; passenger numbers fell by a third in the next year, as a wary public avoided the brand. Nonetheless, not everyone affected by the crash was put off flying. Captain Takahama's daughter Yoko became a flight attendant, working for JAL. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Solve the daily Crossword
