Being furry: Fanship versus fandom

Furscience A Decade of Psychological Research on the Furry Fandom Edited by Courtney N. Plante Bishop’s University Stephen Reysen Texas A&M University-Commerce Camielle Adams University of Calgary Sharon E. Roberts Renison University College, University of Waterloo Kathleen C. Gerbasi Niagara County Community College International Anthropomorphic Research Project Commerce, Texas, USA ISBN-13: 978-0-9976288-3-8 Copyright © 2023 Authors Commerce, Texas, USA Cover Art by @echoofjustice This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Chapter 6 Being Furry: Fanship versus Fandom Stephen Reysen, Courtney “Nuka” Plante What comes to mind when you hear the word “fan?”1 Chances are, you’re probably thinking about a person engaging in behavior related to an interest that they’re passionate about—wearing interest-related clothing, watching or producing interest-related media, and hanging out with others who share that particular interest. This notion of fans as a collection of fan-related behaviors represents a fairly typical conceptualization of what it means to be a fan. Indeed, it makes sense that most laypersons would think to define fans based on the most visible, recognizable, and iconic behaviors that fans engage in. But this isn’t how a psychologist—specifically a social psychologist—thinks of a fan. To a social psychologist, a fan is more than a bundle of specific behaviors. To a social psychologist, a fan is a person who identifies with a particular interest, and it’s this identity that shapes the way they think, feel about, and act in the world. While it might seem like trivial hair-splitting to distinguish fan identity from the behaviors fans engage in, coming to think about being fans in terms of their identity has proven to be one of the most important and fruitful avenues for psychologists to research and ultimately understand what makes fans tick. By thinking about a fan as an identity, one attaches a sense of significance and gravitas to fan interests, implying something far more than a mere aesthetic preference: it’s a filter through which fans perceive the world, convey information to others, frame their values and beliefs, and make decisions about their behavior. As an illustrative example of what we gain by thinking about fans as an identity, let’s imagine what we can learn about a person based on another identity they may have: their identification with a particular political party. Most of us would reasonably assume, based on which political party someone identifies with, that we have at least some insight into that person’s worldview. We can probably make a reasoned inference about the policies they would support, the people they consider to be allies and enemies, and their behavior in certain circumstances (e.g., in the voting booth) just by knowing whether they identify with a more conservative or liberal political party. Moreover, we understand that this identity is not necessarily static or 1 Other than a device with oscillating blades used to circulate air! 131 fixed, but rather something that can change, both within an individual over time (e.g., changing party affiliation) and more broadly, as something whose cultural meaning may shift (e.g., the policies of Republicans and Democrats shifted dramatically across the 20th century). By considering “fan” as an identity, we are implying that many of the same psychological principles that drive other identities (e.g., political affiliation, gender) are also at work in fans. In the present chapter, we’ll delve into the implications of this approach by first reviewing the most popular theoretical perspective on fan identity—the social identity approach. Next, we’ll make an important theoretical distinction by splitting the concept of fan identity into two parts, fanship, and fandom. Lastly, we’ll illustrate the importance of thinking about fanship and fandom as separate facets of fan identity by showing how they differently predict important beliefs and behaviors for the furries in our studies. What is the Social Identity Perspective? The social identity perspective is the result of combining two separate psychological theories, one called, appropriately enough, social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and the other called self-categorization theory (Turner et al., 1987). Put simply, social identity theory talks about what happens when people think of themselves as members of a group, while self-categorization theory outlines when people are the most likely to see themselves as members of a group. While these are, technically speaking, two distinct psychological theories and experts in the field might get a bit caught up in the minute differences between them, most researchers recognize that the theories complement one another quite well and prefer to treat them as two parts of a social identity perspective. Okay, but why should anyone who’s not a social psychologist care about this social identity perspective? Chances are you picked this book up to learn some interesting facts and trivia about furries, not to get lost in dense psychological theory! Trust us, we haven’t included this chapter just to flex all the reading we had to do in graduate school.2 In fact, we think the social identity perspective is so important to being able to understand furries, that we’ve put this chapter near the beginning of the book. Indeed, much of what follows is consistent with, and can be best understood through, a social identity perspective.3 And we’re not the only ones who think so: this 2 … okay, maybe there’s a hint of that going on, but only a little bit, we promise! As an analogy, imagine that you’re looking at a gallery of artwork created by five different artists. One way to learn about the pieces is to memorize a bunch of trivia about each piece separately (e.g., date, artist, style, etc.). At the end of the day, you’d 3 132 perspective has been used across academic disciplines to explain behavior within groups (e.g., how fans and non-fans alike behave), and to explain behavior between groups (e.g., how non-fans behave toward fans and viceversa). With that in mind, let’s take a moment to see for ourselves what insights we might glean from this social identity perspective that academics can’t seem to stop talking about. Social Identity Theory Tajfel and Turner (1979) were interested, like many social psychologists at the time, in understanding what caused groups of people to fight with one another. Popular theories at the time argued that groups typically came into conflict because the world is limited in its resources, meaning that if one group got something that they wanted, it usually came at the cost of another group not getting (or losing) that very thing (Sherif, 1966; Sherif et al., 1961). Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense: examples abound of groups fighting over something they both want, be it countries warring over land or two different little league soccer teams competing for a trophy and a pizza party.4 But Tajfel and Turner made a provocative suggestion: maybe groups don’t need a reason to be at odds with one another. Maybe they would disagree, compete, or outright fight with one another simply because they were told that they were different from the other group. They suggested that the very act of categorizing people into groups was enough, in and of itself, to lead to intergroup conflict. Their idea didn’t just spontaneously exist, of course. It was an observation based on a series of studies using what they termed the minimal group paradigm. In these studies, participants entered a laboratory and were divided into groups in about as random a way as you can get: they were shown a screen covered in dots and were asked to estimate how many dots were on the screen. Those who overestimated were put into an “overbe left with a set of scattered facts about these specific pieces, and nothing more. But if you had an organizational framework, a way of understanding the style, techniques, and history of each artist, you would be able to look at each piece of art in this gallery (and in others) and be able to predict which piece was made by which artist, as well as to be able to make inferences about when it was made and what might have inspired the piece. This framework ties together the scattered facts and trivia and allows a deeper understanding of the subject. 4 At least, we assume winning the championship comes with a pizza party. Neither of the authors of this chapter were especially athletic growing up! 133 estimator” group while those who underestimated were put into an “underestimator” group (but, in reality it was random assignment to groups). Participants were then escorted off by themselves and given a task: they had to decide how to assign points between the over-estimators and the under-estimators. Importantly, they were told that they, themselves, would not be the recipient of any of these points—they had no skin in this game, so to speak. They were told that these points had monetary value, but that they would not be receiving any of it themselves. Their only choice was whether members of their group (called the ingroup) should receive more money than members of the other group (called the outgroup). It’s also worth noting that participants never actually got to see or interact with other members of their group. For example, while a participant might have been told that they were a dot over-estimator and that they were part of a group of over-estimators, they never actually met any of their fellow over-estimators. The participants were also told that their decision would be anonymous, meaning that they could neither be praised nor condemned by the other participants in the study based on their decision. They would simply make their decision and then leave the lab, where they would never again have to think about their group. This entire procedure was done to ensure that participants had no selfinterest in the decision and that the groups to which they were assigned were entirely meaningless.5 Under such circumstances, there would seem to be no reason for participants to favor their ingroup over the outgroup when it came to giving out points. After all, they wouldn’t personally profit one way or another, and it wasn’t like they had anything in common with the people in their group (aside from supposedly sharing the same tendency to over- or under-estimate the number of dots on a screen). Nevertheless, the results of the study showed that most people gave preferential treatment to “their” group, giving more points to the ingroup over the outgroup. If being put into a group truly had no impact on peoples’ behavior toward group or non-group members, we would expect the same number of points to be given out to members of both groups. Instead, people showed a tendency to favor their ingroup, even if it was a group they had only just learned about, knew next to nothing about, and didn’t personally stand to benefit from.6 5 To drive this point home even more concretely, in one version of the study the participants were outright told that they had been assigned to the groups at random and that they were completely meaningless. 6 Participants probably couldn’t justify being completely one-sided in their allocation of points, but they could probably play dumb and sweep a small amount of ingroup favoritism under the rug as a coincidence. 134 These findings formed the backbone of social identity theory, which, in a nutshell, states that people want to identify as part of distinctly positive groups, and will spend time, effort, and resources to do so. As we saw in the studies above, people willingly favored the group that they were part of, contributing to the idea that it paid to be part of this group and that they were, fortunately, part of the winning group, the group that one would want to be part of. Their actions also contributed to a widening of the gap between ingroup and outgroup members, adding one more difference between the groups and making the distinction between them clearer. But what does this have to do with fan groups? The study above applied to a completely arbitrary group with whom someone shared nothing in common, but fan groups—and indeed most of the groups to which we belong—are far from random, and we have far more in common with other group members than the over-estimators did with their group mates. The logic of the argument goes like this: if we can find ingroup favoritism, outgroup derogation, and a desire to increase group distinctiveness in largely meaningless groups, these same tendencies should be present, but even stronger, in groups that are meaningful and significant to us. In other words, fans should show these same underlying tendencies, but even stronger, especially when their identity as a fan is on their mind. This is exactly what fan researchers have found. For example, Platow and colleagues (1999) went to soccer games and set up charity booths that were either related to the home team, the away team, or neither and found that fans donated more money to the charity whose collectors wore symbols of the home team. In another study of sports fans, Levine et al. (2005) made fans think about their favorite team before sending them across campus to a different building. While walking to the other building, participants saw a person fall and hurt themselves. Importantly, the injured person was either wearing a shirt of the participant’s favorite team, a rival team, or a neutral shirt. The researchers found that fans were more likely to help the person if they wore a shirt of their favorite team. We’ve also observed ingroup favoritism in the furry community, where furries rated their fursona species as having far more positive characteristics than the other nine species being studied. Some fairly influential early research on fan behavior has shown some of the other ways these group processes can impact the way people think, feel, and behave. One such phenomenon is known as basking in reflected glory (Cialdini et al., 1976). In this study, the researchers took note of how likely students were to wear school-themed clothing (e.g., hoodies, t-shirts) after 135 their school’s football team won or lost a game. They found that after a victory, students were more likely to wear symbols of their school as compared to after a loss. Why? Remember, according to social identity theory people are motivated to be part of groups that are distinct and positive. So if a person’s school wins a sporting event, they can siphon off some of that glory for themselves (i.e., basking in the reflected glory of the team) and get a self-esteem boost from being part of the winning group. In contrast, a loss represents a threat to one’s self-esteem, since people typically don’t want to be seen as losers—and so they keep the school hoodie in the laundry hamper. Skeptical readers might find themselves questioning the interpretation of these results. Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to say that wearing one’s school hoodie after a victory means that the person is identifying more strongly with the school community? Fortunately, some follow-up data can speak to this skepticism. As part of the same line of research, the psychologists called up students after a victory or loss and asked them if they knew the results of the recent game. Specifically, the researchers were looking at the choice of words students used when describing the results: did they use the words “we” or “us” to describe the outcome (suggesting a shared identity with the team), or did they use the words “they” to differentiate themselves from the team? Turns out, after a loss, students were less likely to use the words “we” or “us” (e.g., “they lost”) than they were after a victory (e.g., “we won”). Findings like these suggest that fans identify with a particular fan interest, just as people identify with other group identities, to help them forge a positive identity, one that lets them draw self-esteem from their group.7 While the above research suggests that people identify with groups because of this positivity, other research suggests that the distinctiveness afforded by a group—the fact that it helps you to feel different from others—may be just as important, if not more important (Mlicki & Ellemers, 1996). In our research, for example, we manipulated whether furries were compared to sports fans (a dissimilar group), anime fans (a similar group), or made no comparisons at all (control condition; Plante et al., 2015). When the distinctiveness of furry as a social identity was threatened (e.g., when furries were said to be the same as anime fans), highly identified furries were especially likely to get defensive and respond by insisting that being furry was something hard-wired into them, something biological and innate that 7 If you find yourself wondering how this can be the case when some fan groups are stigmatized, which would seem to, if anything, hurt one’s sense of self-esteem, see Chapter 21 and Chapter 22, where we talk about this at length. 136 made them categorically different from other people. Findings like these are consistent with a social identity perspective and show the utility of understanding furries specifically, and fan groups more generally, as group identities. Social identity theory also makes other important predictions about what happens to people when you make them think about their group identity. For one thing, people tend to treat members of other groups as all being the same while seeing the distinctiveness and variability of members of their groups— a phenomenon called outgroup homogeneity. This may lead to the application of stereotypes to members of other groups (e.g., anime fans are all geeks and nerds) while taking offense to the suggestion that members of one’s own group are all the same (e.g., all furries have wolf fursonas). As a test of this own-group bias, a tendency to recognize and distinguish individuals from one’s own group better than members of an outgroup (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001), we ran a study where we pitted furries and college undergraduates against each other in a memory test for fursuit faces, furry art faces, and human faces (Reysen et al., 2018). We showed participants images from each of these categories at the beginning of the study and then, after distracting them for a few minutes, we showed them additional images, some of which were the same as before, and others that were brand new. The results showed that while furries and students were equally good at distinguishing human faces from one another, furries were especially good at distinguishing fursuit and furry art faces. These findings emphasize the fact that people tend to treat all outgroup members as being the same (e.g., college students being unable to distinguish fursuit and furry faces), while ingroup members are more likely to process ingroup information more deeply and make these sorts of distinctions. It’s just another example of how understanding furry as a social identity can help to provide context, perspective, and an explanation for a phenomenon that, by itself, would be little more than a weird, quirky piece of trivia about furries. Taken together, the above findings illustrate how social identity theory can help us to make sense of a wide range of behaviors, be it in fan groups more broadly or in furries specifically. However, social identity theory is only half of the theoretical backbone underpinning the social identity perspective. Let us now briefly turn our attention to the second half of this perspective. Self-Categorization Theory After helping Tajfel develop social identity theory as a graduate student, Turner continued to advance the theory. Alongside his colleagues, the work 137 eventually gave way to what we now call self-categorization theory (Turner et al., 1987). According to this theory, people do not have a single identity but instead shift between a variety of identities from situation to situation. For example, when we are in the classroom, the authors of this chapter think of ourselves as professors, psychologists, or researchers. But at the end of the day, when we return home, our most relevant group identity switches. At home, Stephen may think of himself as a spouse or as an anime fan, while Courtney may think of himself as a furry or as a gamer. Turner and his colleagues proposed that these different identities are not all equal but instead differ in their level of abstraction and inclusiveness. At the most concrete level is one’s identity, their sense of individuality or uniqueness, what makes them different from the person sitting next to them. At higher levels of abstraction is one’s group identity as compared to other groups of comparable size—for example, a furry comparing themselves to an anime fan—or comparing one’s group to broader, more inclusive groups—for example, a furry compared to all of humanity. How inclusive one’s identity is in a given moment, while abstract as a concept, can have real-world consequences. For example, earlier we mentioned the research by Levine et al. (2005) in which fans were more likely to help an injured person if they were wearing a shirt of their favorite soccer team. In a follow-up study, rather than making participants think about themselves as fans of their favorite team before they went on their walk, the researchers instead had them think about themselves as part of the broader, more inclusive category of “soccer fan,” in which all soccer fans were part of the ingroup, not just fans of their favorite team. In this condition, participants were now likely to help both the person with their favorite team’s shirt and the person wearing the shirt of the rival team. In effect, by activating a more inclusive group identity in the participants’ minds, the researchers redrew the boundaries of who was and wasn’t part of the participants’ ingroup, which had a notable impact on their behavior toward others. But we rarely have a researcher standing over our shoulder telling us which of our many social identities we should be thinking about. So what, in a given circumstance, determines which of our social identities will be on our minds? As it turns out, there are two factors at play. The first factor is called accessibility. Accessibility refers to whether someone has a prior history or experience adopting that identity. To illustrate this, neither of the authors of this chapter are Chinese. As such, a Chinese identity is not accessible to either of us. It is not within our repertoire of available identities and so it will 138 not suddenly spring to our minds in a given situation—there are no circumstances under which either of us will suddenly start to think of ourselves as Chinese.8 The second factor is the fit of the identity, which refers to whether the situation is one in which there are groups or stereotypes around us that direct us into thinking of ourselves as part of a particular social identity. So if, for example, Stephen is an anime fan and he walks past an anime-themed store in the mall, this may activate this particular identity in his mind. Once an identity is on our mind, we begin to think of ourselves less as individuals and more as a member of a group, a process called depersonalization. When we are depersonalized, we start to act less and less as unique individuals and give over more of our decision-making to the beliefs, norms, and values of the group. For example, if a stereotype of sports fans is that they are argumentative and boisterous, an otherwise mildmannered and quiet person who is a sports fan may become uncharacteristically loud and confrontational when surrounded by fellow sports fans. Put simply, when we’re thinking about ourselves as members of a group, we tend to act more in line with how members of that group are expected to act. Armed, at last, with a basic understanding of the social identity perspective and an appreciation of how being a fan affects the way we think, feel, and behave, we can now turn our attention to the question of what, precisely, it means to identify as a fan. Identification: Fanship and Fandom To this point, we’ve talked about being a fan as if fan identification were a single concept. However, Tajfel and Turner (1979) make a distinction between a social identity and a personal identity. They define a social identity as the degree to which one feels a sense of psychological connection to other members of a group (e.g., emotional connection, shared values, a common sense of identity). One can see how this would apply to fans who share a sense of community with other fans. But fans can also identify with the interest itself, independent of other fans of the interest. For example, one might really enjoy watching a particular television show while having no interest whatsoever in the fan community and the memes and culture that 8 If, on the other hand, one of us were to suddenly find out that we were adopted and that our extended family was Chinese, and if we were to go to China and spend 30 years living there, a Chinese identity might begin to become accessible to us. 139 surround it.9 Reysen and Branscombe (2010) use the term fanship to refer to the degree of psychological connection one feels to an object of interest (e.g., “I love anime”) and the term fandom to refer to a psychological connection with a fan group (e.g., “I love the anime community”). While fanship reflects a personal identity that can be used to distinguish one person from another (e.g., “I am a bigger anime fan than you”), fandom is a social identity that embeds oneself within a fan group, distinct from other fan groups. Fanship Most psychology research examining fans has tended to focus on sports fans. We suspect this is due to the popularity of sports (e.g., a whole section of the news is dedicated to sports), but also because, generally speaking, it’s easier to find sports fans to study than it is to find members of more niche fan groups. This is why, when Wann and Branscombe (1993) developed their measure of fanship, they did so by sampling sports fans. However, a drawback of this approach is that it led to the development of a measure of fanship that included items that were only relevant to sports fans. For example, participants were asked to indicate how important it was to them that their favorite team wins games. While this question may well assess the fanship of sports fans, the question itself cannot easily be adapted to other fans (e.g., furries, anime fans). To address this problem, Reysen and Branscombe (2010) developed a measure of fanship that could be used for fans of any interest. While the original scale was eleven items long, it was eventually reduced to a threeitem version (or, if space on the survey is really tight, a single-item version) which asks participants to indicate the extent to which they agree with a statement like “I strongly identify with being a furry” from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree (Postmes et al., 2013; Reysen et al., 2013). In nearly all of our furry studies, we include a measure of fanship. We find that, from year to year, there are small fluctuations between samples concerning their average fanship score, but, on average, it tends to be fairly high—exactly what you’d expect to find in a sample of fans (see Figure 6.1). What’s more, fanship scores tend to consistently be higher than scores on a similar measure of fandom, which we discuss in the next section. 9 One of the authors of this chapter feels this way about the television show Rick and Morty, being an avid viewer of the show while having little to no interest in identifying as part of the fan community which has formed around the show. 140 Fandom In the same way that psychological research on fans was dominated extensively by research on sports fans, it was also heavily dominated by research on fanship to the detriment of research on fandom. As such, there are comparatively few studies in psychology looking specifically at the variable of fandom identification. What little research does exist suggests that fandom is an important social identity; science-fiction fans (Obst et al., 2002a, 2002b) and fans across a range of interests more broadly (Chadborn et al., 2018) report identifying more strongly with their fan communities than they do with their local neighborhoods. Yoshida et al. (2015) assessed fanship and fandom in a longitudinal study of Japanese soccer fans to find fandom is a stronger predictor of game attendance. Fanship Fandom 6.5 6 5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Figure 6.1. Furries’ ratings of fanship and fandom across time. 7-point Likert-type scale, from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. When it comes to measuring fandom identification, there are a number of measures available from social identity theory which, while not developed specifically for use with fan groups, can easily be adapted for use in this context (see Reysen et al., 2013). As with fanship, we mostly use a threeitem measure, though we’ll occasionally use a single-item measure of fandom if space gets tight; in both cases, the measure asks participants to indicate their agreement with a statement like “I strongly identify with other furries in the furry community” (Postmes et al., 2013; Reysen et al., 2013). 141 Pitting Fanship and Fandom Against One Another At first glance, it’s easy to think that the distinction between fanship and fandom is trite and meaningless. After all, studies show that fanship and fandom are fairly highly correlated, meaning that people who score high in one tend to also score high in the other (Plante et al., 2021; Reysen & Branscombe, 2010). Even so, the same studies also suggest that, while highly correlated, fanship and fandom are conceptually distinct. This is important because, as the rest of the research in this chapter will show, knowing whether we’re talking about fanship or fandom is important when talking about the potential consequences or implications of one’s fan identity. As an illustrative example, in a study of the brony community,10 Edwards et al. (2019) allowed both fanship and fandom scores to simultaneously predict fan behaviors. In doing so, they were able to measure the association of one variable with fan behavior while statistically controlling for the other one. In doing so, they found that fanship was positively associated with purchasing official merchandise, displaying fan symbols (e.g., wearing a shirt with a symbol), identification with a character from the show, and feelings of entitlement as a fan. In contrast, fandom was positively associated with watching fan-made content, talking to friends about the show, purchasing fan-made products, creating content oneself, attending a fan convention, and watching reruns of the show. In other words, despite being similar to one another, fanship and fandom uniquely predicted different fan behaviors. To show that this wasn’t a coincidence, Reysen et al. (2021) conducted a similar study with anime fans. They found, in line with the brony research, that fanship predicted collecting official merchandise, watching anime, looking at fan art, reading news and reviews, playing anime-related games, listening to J-pop, obsessing about anime, feeling immersed while watching anime, and dreaming about anime—all behaviors indicative of content consumption and being a fan of the content itself. Fandom identification, on the other hand, was associated with spending money on conventions, reading fanfiction, talking with others about anime, posting in online anime forums, and having more friends who also like anime—all behaviors associated with the fan community. Together, the brony and anime data suggest that when pitted against one another, fanship tends to be related to consumption of the object of interest. Fandom, on the other hand, tends to be related to social aspects of fan 10 Bronies are (typically adult male) fans of the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. 142 engagement. Relatedly, because fandom is related to forming and maintaining social relationships with others, it is also connected to better well-being, while fanship is typically not. Indeed, when fanship and fandom are included in the same statistical model, fandom is more likely to be associated with positive outcomes (e.g., well-being), while fanship is more likely to be associated with negative outcomes, such as excessive or obsessive behavior. Fanship and Fandom and Furry Beliefs and Behaviors At long last, we can now turn our attention to our research looking at whether fan identification (fanship or fandom) can help us to predict psychologically important thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in furries. Similar to the research described above, we conducted a series of analyses in which fanship and fandom simultaneously predicted a number of outcome variables. Within each of the tables, values with an asterisk indicate a statistically significant trend, with more asterisks indicating a greater degree of confidence in the finding (* p < .05, ** p < .01). Positive values indicate a positive association (e.g., as fanship scores go up, so too does the other variable), while negative values indicate a negative association (e.g., as fanship scores go up, the other variable goes down). It should be noted that each of the analyses below represents data taken from a multitude of studies over the past decade. In some cases, we used single-item measures of fandom and fanship, while in other cases we used a three-item scale. Some of these analyses are based on samples recruited inperson at furry conventions while others represent data collected online. Given how many different results are presented here, for ease of presentation we have left out information about which result came from which study, although this information is available upon request from interested readers who wish to get in touch with the authors. Furry Activities As shown in Table 6.2, furries’ fanship scores predicted being a furry for a longer period of time while, if anything, fandom scores were associated with being a furry for less time.11 Fanship, relative to fandom, was more 11 One possible explanation of this finding may be that younger furries may identify more with the surrounding fandom while older furries feel less of a connection to the fandom. Given that, demographically, the furry fandom is comprised of fairly young furries (see Chapter 13), it might make sense that, as furries get older, they may feel less of a sense of connection to the current furry fandom, which is more likely to be comprised of furries younger than themselves. To this end, we also discuss issues of ageism and generational differences in the furry fandom in Chapter 12. 143 strongly positively associated with open and avid consumption of furry content, including watching and reading furry related-materials, wearing furry-related apparel, being more likely to own a fursuit, having furry-related dreams, immersion in furry-related media, disclosing one’s identity, and liking furry pornography. Fanship was also more positively associated with negative behaviors, such as problematic purchasing behavior (e.g., buying more merchandise than one has money for). Fandom scores, in contrast, were more positively associated with group-related behaviors, including interacting with other furries online, attending local meetups, and attending furry conventions. Finally, the results reveal some variables where both fanship and fandom identification predicted outcomes to about the same extent: reading news/blogs/reviews, talking with friends about furries, interacting with furries in person, and frequenting furry-related websites. Motivation We’ll discuss the motivations that compel a person to be furry in greater depth in Chapter 19. For now, however, we’ll quickly look at whether fanship and fandom are differently associated with a furry’s underlying motivation to be a furry. As shown in Table 6.3, fanship scores were more strongly positively associated with being motivated by aesthetics (e.g., liking of the style/content), economic motivations, escapism, the attention that being furry provides, and sexual interest. Fandom scores, in contrast, were more strongly associated with being motivated by a desire for belongingness, a sense of family, a desire to experience positive / beneficial stress, and the entertainment provided by being a furry. Notably, both fanship and fandom predicted the extent to which self-esteem is a motivator to be part of the fandom to about the same extent. 144 Table 6.2. Regressions with fanship and fandom predicting fan-related activities. Variable Fanship Fandom Years Furry .20** -.10** Watch / Read Material .28** .06* Read News / Blogs / Reviews .17** .13** Talk with Friends about Furries .19** .18** Interact with Furries in person .14** .17** Interact with Furries Online -.04 .35** Dress Furry-Apparel .30** .10** Attend Local Meetups .10 .18** Number Furry Websites .19** .13** Number of Conventions .04 .10** Number Fursuits .14** -.003 Furry Dreams .24** .12* Immersion in Furry Media .27** .16** Disclose Identity .33** .09** Problematic Purchasing .22** -.26** Liking Furry Porn .14** .07* Table 6.3. Regressions of fanship and fandom predicting motivations. Variable Fanship Fandom Belongingness .19** .47** Family .18** .28** Aesthetic .21** .03 Self-Esteem .25** .25** Economic .16** .01 Eustress .19** .30** Escape .22** .11** Entertainment .02 .23** Attention .22** .10** Sexual Attraction .23** -.04 Individual Differences We’ll discuss individual differences between furries such as personality and fantasy (Chapter 18), as well as how furries develop a healthy sense of identity (Chapter 24) later in this book. For now, we want to briefly highlight the association between fanship and fandom scores and these measures of individual differences (e.g., what makes one furry different from another). 145 As shown in Table 6.4, fanship scores were more negatively associated with emotional stability and components of identity resolution (i.e., integration, differentiation, productivity), meaning that those who scored higher in fanship tended to have less stable emotions and had a less developed sense of identity. Fanship scores were, relative to fandom scores, more positively associated with how furries engage in fantasy, including fantasy proneness (e.g., blurring the lines between fantasy and reality), negative fantasy engagement (e.g., problematic fantasy behavior), having a pathological personality, anxious attachment style (e.g., relationship insecurity), and shyness. Table 6.4. Regressions with fanship and fandom predicting individual difference measures. Variable Fanship Fandom Extraversion -.05 .19** Agreeableness .01 .13** Conscientiousness -.05 .08 Emotional Stability -.14** .11* Openness -.01 .18** Fantasy Proneness (Creative) .18* .09 Fantasy Proneness (Childhood) .15 .08 Negative Fantasy .18** -.06 Positive Fantasy .26** .39** Primary Psychopathy .07 -.14** Pathological Personality .16** -.18** Anxious Attachment .13* -.10 Avoidant Attachment -.06 -.13* Integration -.23** .36** Differentiation -.14** .21** Productive -.13** .12* Worldview .04 .02 Shyness .13** -.16** Magical Thinking .10 .21* Magical Ideation .12* .13** In contrast, compared to fanship scores, fandom scores were more positively associated with greater extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, openness to new experiences, positive fantasy engagement (e.g., healthy fantasizing activities), identity resolution (i.e., integration, 146 differentiation, productive), and magical thinking. Fandom was also less likely than fanship to be associated with psychopathy, pathological personality, and shyness. Taken together, the results suggest that extreme levels of fanship may be an indicator of psychological maladaptation or dysfunction in a way that doesn’t seem to be the case for fandom scores. To put it another way, when one thinks about an obsessive fan, they are probably imagining a fan who is excessively high in fanship, not a fan whose fandom identification is high. We’ll return to this idea in Chapter 19 and Chapter 22 when we talk about social support and the benefits of the furry fandom for building social support and resilience. Identity and Intragroup Variables In a 2015 paper, Roberts et al. proposed three ways in which furries could experience a sense of connection to their favorite/fursona species: identification (e.g., “I was born with this connection to my non-human species”), liking (e.g., “I am preoccupied with my species”), and spiritual connection (e.g., “I feel that I have a mystical connection to my non-human species”). As shown in Table 6.5, fanship scores were more strongly positively associated than fandom scores with all three types of connection. Or, to put it another way, one’s fandom identity says very little about the extent to which they feel a sense of connection to their fursona / favorite non-human animal species. In a similar vein, fanship scores were, relative to fandom scores, more strongly positively associated with one’s fursona spilling over into furries’ everyday life. In a 2020 paper, Plante et al. suggested that when it comes to elitism in fan groups, there are two dimensions: inflating one’s sense of self and looking down upon others (see Chapter 12). Fanship was positively associated with both, whereas fandom identification was not associated with self-inflation and, if anything, was negatively associated with derogation of other furries. Fandom scores were also more likely than fanship scores to be positively associated with helping other furries within the community, the feeling that they are of higher status than others in the community, and with feeling that all furries share a common fate (e.g., if the fandom does well, then everyone benefits). Taken together, these findings again suggest that fandom identification, unlike fanship identification, is much more tied to feelings and behaviors that pertain to the broader furry community, and generally suggests a more healthy and beneficial association with furry than is the case with fanship. 147 Table 6.5. Regressions of fanship and fandom predicting identity and intragroup variables. Variable Fanship Fandom Fursona Identification .57** -.10** Fursona Liking .59** -.04* Fursona Spirit .43** -.02 Fursona Spillover .26** .11** Intragroup Helping -.03 .26** Intragroup Status .02 .30** Willingness to Sacrifice .22** .21** Common Fate -.004 .40** Subgroup Gatekeeping -.01 -.17** Elitism Self-Inflate .38** .06 Elitism Other-Derogate .25** -.28** ID-Acceptance Concerns .20* -.13 ID-Concealment Motivation -.001 -.24** ID-Identity Uncertainty -.55** -.13 ID-Internalized Negativity -.17* -.36** ID-Difficult Process -.02 -.37** ID-Identity Superiority .20* .10 ID-Identity Affirmation .23** .61** ID-Identity Centrality .67** .06 Building off the work of Mohr and Kendra (2011), we adopted a measure that assesses various dimensions of being a member of a stigmatized minority group.12 Specifically, the measure contains eight dimensions: acceptance concerns (feeling that others may not accept me due to being a furry), concealment motivation (desire to hide one’s furry identity), identity uncertainty (feeling uncertain if one is a furry), internalized negativity (rejecting one’s furry identity), difficult process (the process of becoming a furry was difficult), identity superiority (perceiving furries as better than non-furries), identity affirmation (affirming one’s furry identity), and identity centrality (being a furry is central to one’s identity). Fanship scores, relative to fandom scores, were associated with greater concern that others would reject them for being furry, with less uncertainty about whether they were a 12 The original measure was designed to assess feelings toward being a member of a sexual minority. Given that most furries are LGBTQ+ (see Chapter 15 and Chapter 16), many furries are likely to be familiar with the feelings tapped into in this measure. 148 furry, with the feeling that furries were superior to non-furries, and with perceiving furry to be a central part of one’s identity. Fandom, in contrast, was more associated with greater disclosure, less negativity, perceiving the process of becoming a furry as being an easy one, and with affirming one’s furry identity. In short, fanship and fandom scores are differently associated with different aspects of being a member of a stigmatized minority group, although fanship tends to be associated with the more negative aspects of this stigmatized group identification. Well-Being As has been suggested throughout the chapter, we suspect that fandom, as compared to fanship, is more strongly and positively associated with wellbeing, given that it is associated with the social aspects of fan engagement and given that group identification may contribute to a sense of social support and resilience provided by the fandom (see Chapter 19 and Chapter 22). While there is no one single measure of “well-being,” researchers often employ a variety of different measures to assess different facets of the broader concept of well-being (for a review see Linton et al., 2016). As shown in Table 6.6, fanship, as compared to fandom, tends to be associated with lower self-esteem, lower satisfaction with life, less of a sense of purpose in life, and greater depression, anxiety, stress, and psychological distress. Fandom, on the other hand, is associated with greater self-esteem, satisfaction with life, purpose in life, flourishing, relationship well-being, personal growth, environmental mastery, self-acceptance, and body satisfaction, and is negatively associated with depression, stress, loneliness, and psychological distress. These findings support the idea that fandom identification is much more strongly positively associated with well-being, regardless of what facet of well-being is being considered, than is fanship. Miscellaneous In this final section, we cover some variables that didn’t necessarily fit in the other sections, but which may nevertheless be of interest to readers. As an example, Amiot and Bastian (2017) developed a measure to assess one’s felt connection to animals (e.g., “I feel solidarity toward animals”). As shown in Table 6.7, fanship scores were more strongly associated than were fandom scores with one’s felt connection to animals, suggesting that the sense of community associated with fandom may not extend to non-human animals. Fanship scores are also more likely than fandom scores to be positively associated with feeling that one has a phantom body part (e.g., tail, feathers), 149 while fandom scores are more positively associated with identifying as a nerd, feeling empathy for others, and being a less individualistic, more collectivistic person. In a 2003 study, Vallerand et al. (2003) developed a measure of passion that distinguishes between obsessive passion, an excessively felt pressure to engage in one’s interest (e.g., “I am emotionally dependent on furry activities”), and harmonious passion, feeling a sense of choice and control over one’s interest (e.g., “For me, furry activities are a passion that I still manage to control”). In a pattern consistent with prior findings in this chapter, fandom scores were more strongly associated with harmonious passion than were fanship scores, with the reverse being true for obsessive passion. Table 6.6. Regressions of fanship and fandom predicting well-being. Variable Fanship Fandom Self-Esteem -.30** .37** Satisfaction with Life -.18** .24** Purpose in Life -.20* .34** Depression .12* -.18** Anxiety .11* -.06 Stress .21** -.20** Flourishing -.02 .25** BBC Physical -.03 .17** BBC Psychological -.10* .31** BBC Relationships -.11* .16** Loneliness .14* -.19** Ryff-Autonomy .01 -.01 Ryff-Environmental Mastery .003 .17** Ryff-Personal Growth -.01 .16** Ryff-Positive Relations -.06* .26** Ryff-Purpose in Life .003 .13** Ryff-Self-Acceptance -.05 .14** Optimism -.18 .38** Psychological Distress .34** -.19* Body Satisfaction -.14 .19* 150 Table 6.7. Regressions of Fanship and Fandom Predicting Miscellaneous Variables Variable Fanship Fandom Solidarity with Animals .21** .11** Nerd Identification .04 .10** Empathy .10 .21** Phantom Limb .22** .10 Individualism .05 -.11* Collectivism -.05 .14* Harmonious Passion .27** .50** Obsessive Passion .44** .16** Conclusion This chapter began with a theoretical deep dive into what it means to identify as a fan. After reviewing the social identity perspective and seeing how useful it can be to understand fan identity as a social identity, we distinguished between the concepts of fanship and fandom. Past research (Edwards et al., 2019; Reysen et al., 2021) has shown that fanship tends to be associated with consumption of the fan interest and, at its extreme ends, with obsession, excess, and maladaptation. Fandom identification, in contrast, tends to be associated with the social facets of fan interests and with moderation and well-being. The results of our studies in the furry fandom largely followed this same pattern, with fanship being associated with consumption and negative variables (e.g., obsessive passion, elitism) and fandom being associated with social facets of fan interest and well-being. Given that fandom is typically omitted from research in fan psychology more generally, and given that the most memorable exemplars of fan behavior also tend to be the most extreme and maladaptive, the present results speak to the importance of assessing not only how strongly fans feel connected to the object of their interest, but also assessing the connections they form with their fan communities, which may represent a protective factor against obsession and excess. This healthy, protective aspect of fan identity is often overlooked, both by researchers and by laypersons alike, and may be part of why fans of unusual interests—such as furries—so frequently find themselves stigmatized. 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