Purity spiral

Short description: Social feedback loop leading to extremism

A purity spiral is a hypothesized form of groupthink in which members of a group compete to demonstrate increasingly extreme commitment to a particular value, while expressions of doubt, nuance, or moderation are punished.[1] This self-reinforcing feedback loop is sometimes called "moral outbidding".[2]

A purity spiral is argued to occur when a community's primary focus becomes implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and where that value does not have an agreed interpretation.[3] Notable historical examples to which the term has been applied include the French Revolution, the Moscow Trials, McCarthyism in the United States, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

One aspect that stands out in all purity spirals is the vanity of small differences, and the punishing of people for the most minor transgressions.

Gavin Haynes, Spiked, 10 February 2020[2]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Notable examples
* 3 See also
* 4 References

## History

The term purity spiral was coined in one of the first systematic sociological accounts of victimhood culture, The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars, where it is described as a form of infighting among both activists and members of victim groups.[4]

In a 2020 BBC documentary about purity spirals, British journalist Gavin Haynes said that purity spirals punish people for "the most minor transgressions," and noted that they make it socially unacceptable to express a preference contrary to that of the group.[2][3] Haynes has compared it to the idea of preference falsification put forward by Turkish-American academic Timur Kuran in his 1995 book Private Truth, Public Lies, with Kuran saying in 2020 that incentives and systems are needed to disrupt the process, and observing that even a small amount of opposition or doubt can lead to a greater wave of questioning within the group.[2] Haynes sees French philosopher René Girard as having described many of the principles of the purity spiral, including mimetic rivalry and the scapegoat mechanism, in his 1972 book Violence and the Sacred.[2]

## Notable examples

Haynes and others have given several examples of historical settings, groups, and eras in which they perceive purity spirals to have occurred:[2][1]

* The French Revolution, which historians Katrin Redfern and Richard Whatmore label "perhaps the greatest [purity spiral] in history"[5]
* The Puritan Revolution[5]
* The Chinese Cultural Revolution, with its Red Guards and mass denunciations[2]
* Moscow trials[6] \- demonstration of increasingly extreme loyalty tests required to maintain normalcy
* The actions of the Khmer Rouge[2]
* McCarthyism[2]

Haynes also points to more recent examples on social media, including:

* Instagram knitting circles in 2020, where some felt that an attempt to promote cultural diversity had led to the online bullying of transgressors[3]
* The young adult fiction community in 2018, where the #ownvoices diversity movement led to people leaving bad online reviews of a book they had not read, accusing it of "white saviourism"[6]

## See also

* Biology:Herd behavior - Behavior of individuals acting in a group
* Philosophy:Moral panic - Fear that some evil threatens society
* Philosophy:Spiral of silence - Political science and mass communication theory
* Biography:René Girard

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Campbell, Bradley; Manning, Jason (2018). "Opposition, Imitation, and the Spread of Victimhood". The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783319703299.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Gavin Haynes. "The purity spiral", Spiked, 10 February 2020.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Gavin Haynes. "The Purity Spiral", BBC, 11 February 2020.
4. ↑ McAfree, Kevin (Spring 2018). "Honor, Dignity, Victim: A review of The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning". Skeptic 23 (2).
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Redfern, Katrin; Whatmore, Richard. "History tells us that ideological 'purity spirals' rarely end well". The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/history-tells-us-that-ideological-purity-spirals-rarely-end-well-140888.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Gavin Haynes. "The purity spiral: how the woke police are ruining Young Adult publishing" (archived), The Telegraph, 10 February 2020.

* v
* t
* e

Conformity

Group pressures|

* Authoritarian personality
* Bandwagon effect
* Collectivism
* Coercive persuasion
* Consensus reality
* Deplatforming
* Contagion
* Behavioral
* Crime
* Hysterical
* Suicide
* FOMO
* Groupthink
* Hazing
* Herd mentality
* Indoctrination
* Invented tradition
* Memory conformity
* Milieu control
* Mobbing
* Nationalism
* Normalization
* Normative social influence
* Ostracism
* Patriotism
* Peer pressure
* Pluralistic ignorance
* Propaganda
* Rally 'round the flag effect
* Right-wing authoritarianism
* Scapegoating
* Shunning
* Social influence
* Socialization
* Spiral of silence
* Teasing
* Tyranny of the majority
* Xeer

Conforming oneself|

* Compliance
* Countersignaling
* Herd behavior
* Internalization
* Social proof
* Obedience

Experiments|

* Asch conformity experiments
* Breaching experiment
* Milgram experiment
* Stanford prison experiment

Counterconformity|

* Alternative media and journalism
* Anti-authoritarianism
* Antisocial tendencies
* Auto-segregation
* Civil disobedience
* Cosmopolitanism
* Counterculture
* Culture jamming
* Deviance
* Devil's advocate
* Eclecticism
* Eccentricity
* Hermit
* Idiosyncrasy
* Individualism
* Rebellion
* Red team
* Ritual clown
* Satire
* Shock value

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