In this episode of Synergy Loves Company, Dr. Cody Havard joins host Eric to delve into the world of Disney fandom. They discuss the influence of family in shaping fan behavior, the unique bond between being introduced to Disney and becoming a fan, and the strong emotional attachment fans have to the brand. From Disney's size as an entertainment company and its acquisitions, to who wants to take Dr. Havard's "Being a Fan of Disney" class, the conversation covers a wide range of topics related to the Disney Fandom and the Class. They also explore the term "Disney adult" and the reclaiming of its positive connotations. Cody shares his personal experiences and the emotional connection people feel at Disney parks. The episode also delves into Dr. Havard's research on group behavior and negative attitudes in various settings, shedding light on how Disney serves as a catalyst for connections between people. Tune in to gain insight into Disney fandom and and how we Disney fans connect to Disney and Society as a whole!
Find more Dr. Cody Havard online at https://www.sharedperspectives.org https://synergylovescompany.com/person/cody-havard
Thanks for enjoying Synergy Loves Company: How Disney Connects to Everything.
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00:04 --> 00:53 Synergy loves company. We have this coterie of rich franchises. The company now that people want to engage with. I came here to try and continue what Walt Disney and his associates set in motion 50 years ago, which is to experiment with every new and innovative kind of entertainment possible. It's what they hope to do here to really develop something that, well, just more than an entertainment enterprise. It's something that contributes in many other ways.
00:59 --> 02:24 Hey, this is Synergy loves company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything because we all connect with Disney in our own special ways. I'm Eric, and today we're going to explore those ways that we connect to Disney, our Disney fandom. Fandoms are communities, but they can also be very personal experiences as well. And there are so many different ways that someone could get into Disney. And maybe you could list a few as to how you became a Disney fan. Disney Parks, Disney Channel, classic animation, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel. The list goes on and on. And in honor of this back to school time of year, I thought it would be a good idea for us to take some time and learn a little something about our Disney fandom. How we connect with Disney. If only there was someone who, like, taught a class about being a fan of Disney, or someone who like, wrote a book about being a fan of Disney. Or maybe even someone who podcasts about being a fan of Disney. Oh, wait, that's right. There is someone who does all three of those things. So keeping me company today is Doctor Cody Haverd, the creator of being a fan of Disneyland, the class, the book, and the podcast. Cody, welcome to the show.
02:24 --> 02:31 Thank you. Thank you, Eric. It's nice to be here. That was a really, really fun introduction. Thank you. Yeah.
02:31 --> 02:56 Well, no, I'm excited that you're here to talk about all the work you do with all of those things. Really? So you do study fandom and teach a university level class called being a fan of Disney. But you're also a Disney fan yourself, so you're kind of like on the inside of it. So what is your Disney fandom like? How would you describe your fandom?
02:57 --> 07:06 So, my. My fandom? I think like most kids growing up, I was born in the eighties. I was old enough to, like, experience the end of like, like the Black Cauldron. I remember getting a Fergie plush toy. And then I experienced like, the early Renaissance movies. So I remember trying to sing like Ariel. I remember trying to do the hair flip and like, swimming pools when we were at hotels and everything. My sister had much better luck with that than I did. I had short hair. But so I think growing up at that time, you just kind of, you were inundated with Disney, not like it is today, however. I mean, like then as a kid, you kind of, you saw a lot of Disney things. Like, we saw the movies. I remember trying to draw the genie while we're waiting on the family car to be worked on, trying to write in the Disney font. And so it was just kind of all around you. As a kid, we went to the parks two or three times. I think the first time I went was 88. And then the next year, we went back with my extended family. So it was my mom, my grandmother, and then all the cousins. So there were a total of six of us. There were three families that went, and we, that we went to magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood studios or MGM studios had just opened. Universal studios had just opened. So we went to those four parks and we stayed at the polynesian resort. And that's the only time I stayed at the polynesian resort. We got to do, like the little, we thought it was really cool because we got to drive the boats by ourselves in the lagoon. That was really fun for us. And then, you know, as you, as you get older, I got into high school, I was playing sports at a lot, and I just didn't really have a lot of time to do things. I probably at some point thought I was a little too cool for Disney, or at least too cool to admit to other people that liked Disney. However, 1995 was when Toy Story came out, and so it was this new kind of form of entertainment. And I remember watching that movie, and it reminds me of what people say about Star wars, that the very first time I saw those clouds on the wall, I thought, this is completely different. Like, this has changed entertainment. There were very few movies where I felt like that. Interestingly enough, Titanic was one that I was like, this changes a lot of things. And then Jurassic park. And so I started to appreciate those types movies then and then in college, I just didn't have money or time to do anything. I recently got back into my fandom pretty hard, probably in 2011 or twelve when that was the first time I went back to the parks in a really long time. I went with my wife. We were dating at the time. And then since then, we've had our two boys have. Now I think my oldest son has gone to Walt Disney World three times, my youngest two times. And then this last year, we got to go to Disneyland. And so it was a lot of fun. And I'll stop talking right now so we can. I've been talking long enough, but I could talk about, like, the class and everything in just a little bit, of course.
07:06 --> 08:02 And that's. Yeah, no, I feel like there's a lot of similarities in your story of your Disney fandom and mine. They're not the same, of course, but I feel like that idea of kind of it being everywhere as a kid, being a kid of the nineties, I could totally agree with that. And then I kind of had that experience of rediscovering Disney with bringing my family to the parks, too. And so I think that some of us do have a very similar story. But, like, you just talked about with the class coming up, as far as you've done a lot of research on Disney, and you interview a lot of Disney fans for the class, for the podcast. That's a companion to the class. And so in studying Disney fandom, have you found any commonalities or trends that kind of run across Disney fans? Is there a certain kind of person who's more likely to be a Disney fan?
08:03 --> 08:20 So real quick, one thing I do want to mention, looking at your shirt, figment is, as we talked about when you interview for being a fan of Disney, the podcast, he's my favorite parts character, possibly my favorite Disney character.
08:20 --> 08:22 I'm not going to lie. I chose the shirt because of that.
08:24 --> 13:44 Thank you. What's so interesting is when I went that first time, I absolutely fell in love with Figment and the imagination pavilion. I interacted with Figment and Dreamfinder, like, the walk around character, Dreamfinder, that no longer there now. And that was one area where I could not understand why this little purple dragon was not more places. I mean, I probably, we bought, like, the little figurines while we were there. I have, like, ceramic figurines from when I was at, like, that. Copyright 1982. So, like, I would have gotten those on my first or second trip. Like, and I know, like, he wasn't other places, which was so interesting to me. He did some, like, you know, educational videos and everything that you can find on YouTube. But now, like, he's made such a comeback now that, you know, he's in the comics. He's kind of the unofficial mascot of Epcot. There's rumors that they're making a movie about him. And so it wasn't until I was older that I realized figment was only an east coast character. He's one of the few Disney characters that was created solely for the parks and hasn't really, you know, he hasn't been in many things other than that he made an appearance at inside out, too, in a picture frame or in a painting. But, like, that was really, really interesting to me. And so getting into the types of fans or types of people that make Disney fans, there's really not like a, I haven't found, like, a particular type of person that becomes a fan of Disney. What's really interesting is when I got my start researching fan behavior in sport, and particularly rivalry and competition in sport. And so because of that, like, we'll look at things like socialization into sport. Who introduces you to sport? And it's typically the family or close loved ones. That's the same thing with Disney. And so what's really, really interesting is across kind of the swath of consumerism, if we want to call it that, our families introduce us to so many things. However, I think Disney, much like sport, is there's a strong, very, very strong connection with that, that if you are introduced to who your favorite sport team is early in life, it takes a lot to change that as you grow older. It's the same thing with Disney. If you grew up with people who liked Disney now, yes, you definitely can kind of have overload, if you will, and choose not to, you know, like, you don't want to be a fan of Disney as you grow older because your family was such a big fan. But the, the stories I've heard of that happening pale in comparison to the number of people who say, I grew up in a Disney family, or I was a Disney kid, or much like you and I when we grew up, it was just everywhere. Like, you didn't know. You didn't. Sometimes you didn't even know that you were seeing something Disney related, and you, you were. And now it's even more so with just the amount of acquisitions they've made. The sheer size of the company is enormous. It's the largest entertainment company, so they own so, so much. What's really interesting is another area that I've really looked into a lot is streaming and streaming entertainment. And when you look at Disney's ability to compete with, like, an Amazon and an Apple, the giant tech companies, I don't know how much Disney is worth today, but it's usually around 290. Somewhere around there. At one point, it was over 300, $350 billion, which is a lot, is very, very huge. But, like, Apple is like 3 trillion, you know, and Amazon is almost 2 trillion. Like, all of these entertainment companies are very, very small compared to these tech companies. And so that's a really interesting area. That's a little bit of a, probably a little bit of a detour I got going. Sorry.
13:45 --> 14:18 No, but that's, that's very interesting, that, like, family connection that you kind of pull out there. And it is a company, so it's like one of those things that we can look at it in like, that terms of the family. Like, you know, the family introduces us to it or close people or it's all around us. But it is, at the end of the day, it's a company like Apple, like Amazon, like those giant companies around it. So that, no, it is an interesting, it kind of carved out its own little category, in a way.
14:18 --> 14:24 Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's, it's like, I think we talked about this when you, you did my show.
14:24 --> 14:25 Yeah.
14:25 --> 15:58 What other. If you're a sports fan, there's one thing that I think you're different about, unique about sports and Disney fans. Also. If you're a sports fan, we talked about you. If your team's not doing well, you're calling for the head coach to be fired or the general manager to be fired. You know who those people are. Disney people know who the CEO is. If you say the name Josh D'Amaro people, most people know who that is. If they are a Disney fan, do the majority of people who drink Coca Cola products know who the Disney, the Coke CEO is? You know, like, do people know even know who the Samsung CEO is? I think I, a lot of people know Tim Cook with Apple, but also, I think there's, if you're a Disney fan, there's such a strong tie between Apple and Disney, also dating back to when they made the Pixar purchase and kind of the turmoil that Disney and Pixar were in in the early two thousands before Bob Iger took over. So, yeah, I mean, it is a company, and at the end of the day, they are, you know, I've heard it said many times, they're not in it to make money. They're in it to make a lot of money. And so, you know, we all, we all kind of, we all participate in, like, the mass consumerism that is the Walt Disney company. And we do it, we do it willingly because.
15:58 --> 15:59 Oh, for sure.
15:59 --> 16:02 Because the attachment we have to and that, a lot of that has to do with family.
16:03 --> 16:36 Oh, yeah. You could notice my mass consumerism wall I have back here of Disney items. Yeah, we do. We do buy it. So that makes me start thinking about the Disney fans, the people who decide, the students who decide to take your class so I guess my next question is, who decides to take a class about being a fan of Disney? I know I would. Cause I am a fan of Disney. But are most of your students Disney fans to begin with?
16:36 --> 20:16 So we, it's offered through our honors college. And what our honors college does is they have 1 hour seminars that they call freshman seminars. They like people to take them in their first year, but you don't have to. If you are an honors student at the University of Memphis, you have to take it. Take an honors forum at least once before you graduate. So in the class, I usually will have a lot of freshmen with some, you know, upperclassmen sprinkled in there. The class ranges from 15 to sometimes one semester I had 21. And what's really, really interesting is I started the class because somebody told me, hey, you should start a class on what it is to be a fan of Disney because I talked about it so much. And I think they did that because they're like, I can't take more time out of my day to talk to you about this. You need some outlet to talk about this. And so when I started the class, the first time I walked in, and every first day I walk into the semester, I will ask, how many people are fans of Disney? And it's usually more than half. But I will ask people, what are some of the reasons you took this class? And some people are, I grew up a Disney fan, or I'm a fan of Marvel, I'm a fan of Star Wars. I want to, you know, I wanted in this class, some other people are like, well, it was between this class and another one that would fit my schedule. This one seemed more interesting to take. When I ask about parks we live in, like I teach at the University of Memphis. We are about a twelve hour drive from Orlando. We would be like a two day drive from Anaheim. So you would have to fly to Anaheim if you're going to Disneyland. When I ask about parks, who all has been, it's usually less than 50%. It might be five or six people in the class have, have been to a park one semester. I did have like eleven people who had been to parks, and I had multiple people who had been to parks on both coasts. Some actually had been to some of the international parks, but usually it's five or six people. And so what's really, really interesting is they people will take the class because they have this one connection to Disney or two connections to Disney. Or like I said, because it sounded more interesting than another class. But then throughout the semester, like, they're wanting to learn more about it. People come in and they're not really sure what the class is going to be about. Are we just going to watch part videos? Are we going to watch, like. Like, movie, like theatrical movie trailers and things like that? Sometimes we will take a special trip and go to see whatever latest Disney movie is coming out this semester. I'm not sure if we'll be able to do that. We're not going to go see Deadpool and Wolverine. I don't think that would be a good move. But, yeah, you know, people. People take the class and they want to learn more about it, which is really, really fun and really, really cool. For me, it is.
20:16 --> 20:47 So you kind of find that, too, that the students have kind of different access points to Disney. It's interesting, especially because I feel like in the Disney, I don't even know what to call it. The Disney social media landscape, I guess we'll call it. I used to be heavy on the Diz Twitter, but it seems to be all over the place now. So much attention is put on the parks. It's kind of interesting to hear that sometimes you have only a small handful of the class who's actually visited the parks.
20:47 --> 22:07 One thing I would absolutely love to develop the class enough where we took a trip to Walt Disney World, because I am a firm believer that you. That people should be able to go at least once in their life. And it is undeniable. It's getting more and more expensive. It's getting more and more difficult to go. So it would be really, really cool for me to be able to kind of share that with everybody that's in the class to say, like, here, you know, here's what we've been talking about. Here's what it is. That's the same reason I would. I actually. I would love to see a. A dark ride built in Disney Springs and in downtown Disney. Because if people can't afford to go to the parks, they can at least experience. They can go to those places and experience. This is what it is. And. And that definitely would caused some people to purchase tickets to parks. But for those people who just absolutely couldn't afford it, at least they get to have that experience without paying the price of admission to get into the theme parks.
22:07 --> 23:01 Yeah. The idea of a ride in Disney Spring, I know I'm all for it, 100%. Or Downtown Disneyland or traveling. It almost reminds me of what they. They could very easily do something like what they were talking about with that play pavilion that I don't think is getting much traction and have that, like, black box, um, kind of promotional ride kind of idea so that. Yeah, no, I'm. I'm 100% for that. To get people more access to Disney attractions. Um, but let's talk about access to your class, because I want to know a little bit more about what is the being a fan of Disney class. Like, if I were to come in maybe not the first day, because maybe there's getting to know us, but, like, in the middle of the semester, I come into your class, what might be happening in a class called being a fan of Disney.
23:02 --> 27:52 So, as I said, like, kind of started the class so I could have an outlet to talk about all this stuff. And so the first semester that I taught it, spring 2018, I walked in the class and I said, here's my plan. I hadn't. I emailed the director of the honors program, and in three weeks, I'm teaching the class. Like, they're just like, yeah, yeah, go ahead, let's do it. Because these are. They're 1 hour classes. They're. They're supposed to be fun. They're set up so that people can meet people outside of their majors and see your, you know, professors in a different light, that type of thing. So it was. I was given a whole lot of freedom for what I wanted to do. And I remember I did not create a syllabus with a schedule on it. I had a syllabus with, like, here are some. Some social media handles to follow. Here are some videos. I walked in the class that first day, and I explained, I don't have a syllabus with this, or I don't have a schedule, because here's what I'm thinking I want to do. And I literally thought, I want to watch. Let's watch part videos, because that's what I enjoy doing. But I asked the students, what are some things that you want to know? And, I mean, the floodgates just open. They wanted to know the history of the company. They wanted to know the history of animation about Pixar, how Pixar, Marvel, Star wars, how all of that was, like, how it's evolved in Disney now. So the acquisitions. I did have one person say they wanted to know, like, the history of opening a theme park. I'm like, well, or how to open a theme park. That's not this class, but. And so now we actually. It's sort of a survey course. We'll start the semester. We'll kind of talk about people's connections to Disney. I do. I often do show, like, the huge graphic of how much Disney owns so everybody could see. As we talked about before, I will challenge students to go a day without consuming Disney. And usually that lasts about four or five minutes, if that. And then we will go through, and we'll talk about current events that are happening with Disneyland. We will talk about. I talk a lot about Disney and kind of streaming strategy. We spend about six weeks on the parts. And then, because students like doing it, we'll also hold, like, votes, like discussions and votes, kind of like bracket style. What's the, what's the best MCU project? Or what's your favorite MCU project? Who's your favorite or best MCU character? We do that for Pixar movie, Walt Disney World attractions, and then Disney movies at the end. And so we kind of, I go into each semester with, here's the things that I think will be interesting to cover. Like, I love talking about epcot, for example, and the original plans for Epcot, and then what it kind of evolved into, but it also does change based on what's happening in the real world. So, for example, spring 2021, with all the kind of back and forth struggle between the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney World in Florida and the Florida legislature, that was like, we spent some time talking about that just kind of from different perspectives, like what employees were thinking and things that I was reading about what employees were thinking, not getting into the political side of everything. Fall 2022 was a big semester for change because we're watching, I believe, the first live broadcast on Disney, if you remember, as Elton John live at Dodger Stadium. And that was overshadowed by the news that Bob, who just left a year and a half ago or two years ago, is now back as CEO. Like, that was the change from, from JPEG back to Eiger. And so it kind of depends on what the students want to talk about and what's going on within, like, Disney culture and society at that time.
27:53 --> 28:17 So then the next question I have, because that sounds perfect for big Disney nerds like myself. So can someone who's not enrolled at the University of Memphis and not in your class, can we follow along somehow with your class and participate in any ways? Is there any ways that we could kind of get some of the experience of your class?
28:18 --> 34:58 So that's one thing that we have. We've looked at many different ways of how to do that within the university, and I'm in the process of actually writing up a proposal to do it sort of as a community class, which would count for people's professional development if they like. If you have a job that you need professional development credit and you could use this for professional development, as far as. Until that happens. And that would, you know, that would actually be like somebody registers for it and it's two or three weekend course, whatever, you know, we have to get into the specifics of that. But until then, people can follow along. What I like doing at the beginning of each semester, I will post the schedule for. For people who want to follow along. And the schedule is. Is very, very in depth. I have to tell the students in the class, look, don't worry. Don't, like, flip out. Yes. This is a 1 hour class. Like, this is a passion project. So that's why this schedule looks as big as it does, you know, but people can follow along. They can listen to the podcast. I mean, the podcast was started because during the pandemic, when I started doing more and more one on one interviews. Then fall 2020, I asked students how they liked it, and they said they liked it, but sometimes they. They were all YouTube videos. They said they liked it, but sometimes they just listened to it. So we started a podcast. One reason, one thing I wanted to do with being a fan of Disney, the book, is to give people another way to follow along with the class. So, like, within that, if people read the book, everybody loves hidden mickeys. And trying to find hidden mickeys everywhere, you know, you find them in the parks, you find them in movies. But we. We're so into it now that we'll be driving around town or walking somewhere, and all of a sudden, like, one of my boys would be like, oh, look, there's a hidden Mickey. And it, like, it's. It's just this awesome feeling. So, yeah, I wanted to do something like that in the book as well, because we do that in class. So I created hidden baffits. B a f a b a f o d. So being a fan of Disney and so, basically, a hidden baphet is if you. If you get the book, you'll. You'll see it. It's a little logo with a castle on it. It's neither Cinderella castle nor sleeping beauty castle, but it has a Mickey and silhouette inside it. And then on the top of it, kind of looping over it, it says Baffid. And I put those. I put one of those in each chapter, and it'll be just. Sometimes it's at the end of a sentence, sometimes it's right in the middle of a sentence. And on my website, sharedperspectives.org people can go and they can report where they saw these hidden. And people could even, like, you know, you can have get, like, a digital badge that says you're a hidden Baphet investigator. People could take quizzes from the book. There are, on sharedperspectives.org. there's three quizzes. It's a 15 chapter book because the class is 15 weeks, and so it kind of works out nicely where each week we can go over a different chapter. And so people could take a, like, chapter or quiz one is chapters one through five, and then six through ten is quiz two, and then eleven through 15 is quiz three. So those are ways that people can do it. And then one thing that we do in the class, we have two case studies, one over what Marvel character do you think best represents you? Because a lot of the students are fans of Marvel, so we did that. That's off of a faculty essay I wrote for the Journal of Undergraduate Studies. We used to have one that was, what attraction at Walt Disney World or Disneyland best represents you? That was replaced by the marvelous assignment. It's actually, now I'm going to start giving people the choice if they want to do one or the other. And then at the end, there is kind of a synthesis paper of basically, what is Disney's impact on society. And for the students, they need to use seven examples from the interviews, because each week they have, you know, six or seven choices of all of these interviews that I've done with people like you to talk about fandom. And so in this paper, they kind of summarize it and they say, here's what it means to fans. Here's what it means to greater society. And then here's what it means to me. Like, here's how my fandom of Disney has changed. And it's really, really cool to read those, because at the end, you ultimately do have some students that say, you know, I wasn't really a fan of. Now I appreciate it much more because of this, or I was a fan of the parts. Now I know all, everything that the company does. People can follow along in the book with that as well. I actually have three chapters that I give my response to those questions. So I kind of, I call it putting myself through the paces. And so people can do that. People can, you know, they can always message me or post it on. There is a public fan group called being a fan of disney on Facebook. People can post things there that they, you know, want to do. If they write about those stories and those case studies and everything. So there are various ways that people could follow along. And one easiest way is to visit sharedperspectives.org and listen to the podcast. Or if you prefer watching video of talking heads, essentially watch the, you know, you can watch the YouTube channel. Also.
34:58 --> 35:17 I'm going to guess that if they like video of watching talking heads, they probably made it this far in the YouTube version of this episode. So, yes, definitely go over and look at those. No. And I also think it's really cool that because I was on your show, that I may possibly one day be cited in someone's paper.
35:17 --> 35:18 Yes.
35:18 --> 35:20 Yeah, that is pretty cool. That just blew my mind.
35:21 --> 36:11 And so here's, here. What's so cool? When I read the societal impact of Disney, it gets very emotional because you can tell, yeah, there are always going to be some people that it's just, oh, this is due at 1150 911 55. I'm sitting down and I'm just writing anything. I can't. But there are people who go really, really in depth. The information people will pull from the interviews a lot of times is very unique and are things that, that I totally miss, you know, like, we do interviews like this all the time. And so I will, sometimes a student will turn in something, I'll be like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, that is a, that's a great perspective on what this person said that I didn't think about before.
36:11 --> 36:59 Yeah, that is really neat when they could kind of pull it out like that and find something in there and. Yeah, no, and so your class does seem like it's a very dynamic thing and kind of can change with the interests of the class and the current events happening and all those kind of things happening in the world. And of course, Disney is very dynamic, and the study of Disney fandom is dynamic and always changing. And you have actually been doing some research into fandom with Disney, with sports teams, with other sorts of fandoms. And it's something called comparison studies that kind of combines how all those fandoms kind of interact with each other in ways. And so could you tell us a little bit about what is comparison studies?
36:59 --> 46:30 Yeah, so when, like I said, when I started researching, this is my 14th year at the University of Memphis, I've been researching group behavior, competition rivalry for probably that means probably 16 years or so. And at first it was basically the, what does rivalry do to people? And what are the promotional aspects, the marketing aspects, or implications from rivalry? We quickly realized, okay, some of the negativity that occurs between rival groups, that's caused by the promotions that they see. So, for instance, we did a series of studies. I did some, somebody else did some that showed people were asked if you, if you could remain anonymous, there's no way you would get in trouble. How likely would you be to consider, like, tripping a fan, player or coach or the rival team, breaking a fan, breaking the leg of a coach, fan or player of the rival team, physically hurting, or in some cases, in some of these studies, and there's been six or seven of them, how likely would somebody be to consider murdering a player, fan or coach of the rival team? Consistently? When I was writing my first textbook on what rivalry is and how it can impact sport organizations and managers, I went and I looked at all of this data and I said, I found consistently, if we're talking about that most heinous act of oppression, like, again, nobody knows it, you wouldn't get in trouble for thinking this. How likely would you be to consider seriously hurting someone? Orlando, consider murdering someone from the rival group. Consistently, one to 2% of all the samples scored a seven, which is definitely. They definitely would consider that, which is very, very scary. And you think, okay, hopefully people are just kind of showboating a little bit and they're just saying this, and they're being kind of, as people say, like keyboard warriors, that type of thing. But this. Some of this data was collected online. Some of it was collected on paper and pencil in classrooms. Some of it was collected, like, at sporting events. So it's over all these different ways. And in every study, it was one to 2% of that population that was studied said they definitely would consider this most heinous act of regression. So I started thinking about it. I said, okay, let's take the conservative figure of 1%. That doesn't sound that bad. That means 98, 99% of people would not do that. That's good. Like, that's good, but that. But if there's 1% of people who definitely would consider things like that, even if they are just kind of trying to, like, be grandiose about it, we've seen examples of things like that happening. We've seen examples of people who get into fights. We've seen examples of people who have been killed because of rivalry. Like, we've seen all. A lot of these horrible, horrible acts. And so I started thinking, okay, let's take that 1%, because it's easy to calculate. Out of 100 people, that means there's one person in a crowd. Out of 1000, that means there's ten. Extrapolate it up to some of our biggest stadiums, seat over 100 people. That means if what we have found is like, is accurate, and it seems like it is, because we found it six or seven times. And for people who don't know, if you replicate something that many times, that's pretty accurate. That's very, very accurate. That would mean a thousand people or more in that stadium, in that environment, would have, like, kind of been conditioned to definitely consider these heinous acts of aggression. So what can we do to stop things like that? Well, we did, we did another study where we looked at the promotional titles we used, and we found that when somebody was exposed to the word rivalry to promote a rivalry versus exposed to the word hate, the people who are exposed to the word hate didn't necessarily actually report, like, stronger feelings of rivalry. They just reported more negative behavior toward the out group. So you're just elevating that level of negativity and that derogation between these two out groups. And so after a while, I said, you know, okay, we know all of this in sport. What about outside of sport? So that's where the comparison studies come in, where we started looking at how do sport fans feel about their rival groups versus. We started with Disney Parks fans. Fans of Disney Parks. How do they feel about the Disney parks versus the universal parks? And can we compare those? And so we used scales that I had developed one, the rivalry perception scale, which is four subscales. We don't need to get into the methodology of that, but we also use something called the glory out of reflective failure scale, which basically says, if your out group is unsuccessful in some way and you have nothing to do with it, are you going to celebrate that? How likely are you to celebrate that? And so we started doing those comparisons, and that first one we saw, okay, fans of sport are much more negative toward their outro. Thank you. Disney fans are toward universal. That makes sense. But also what was really, really cool is people who reported being a fan of both sport and Disney were less negative toward their rival group than somebody who was just a fan of sport or just a fan of Disney. And so that was really, really cool. And that's something called the common in group, that if you are a member of more groups, the more groups you're a member of, the less kind of negative repercussions you have if you're in group fails in some way. Like if you're a fan of. If you're a member of only one group and that group experiences some type of perceived failure, you take it really, really hard. However, like, I'm a fan of the Texas Longhorns. That's where I went to school, University of Texas. So if they're successful, great. If they're not successful, I can still go and watch park videos or turn on a Disney movie and feel good, you know, so I don't experience that kind of perceived failure the way someone else might. That's just a fan of, like, the Longhorns or fill in another sports team. So we started there, and then we just kept going. And at this point, we've done twelve different settings. So we've had eleven different studies on this, because every study had sport compared to Disney parks, compared to theme park, fandom, compared to streaming and cell phone usage, athletic footwear. We've done things like politics and religion. We did gaming consoles. And then when we got finished with gaming consoles, like Xbox versus PlayStation, someone said, hey, if you really want to understand the gaming population, do PC. Somebody uses a computer to game versus somebody who uses a console to game. And so at the end of all of that, what we were able to do, we were able to pull all of this data together and compare all of this data, and we created. I combined the skills that I had developed into a measure called the group behavior Composite. And that basically is just over 16 items. At the end, each person gets one score that kind of shows their relative negativity toward that relevant outgroup. And so we had those scores for, you know, for sport, for politics, for religion, gaming, Disney parks, theme park, all of these different things. And we came, we were able to find which groups elicited the most negativity, which group setting. Sorry, elicited the most negativity toward their out groups. And there's some really, really interesting findings that were pretty surprising. We have studied religion, politics, online gaming, which would be people who use PC versus people who use console. I said sport, athletic footwear, mobile phones, streaming services, general theme park, fandom, gaming console, like the PlayStation versus Xbox, Disney Parks fans. And then we had science fiction, Star Wars, Star Trek comics, Marvel versus DC. Of those twelve, could you tell me, what do you think the top three or the three settings that would influence the most negativity would be?
46:32 --> 46:53 So, out of those, I would guess that sports does get pretty intense. And then you had a couple of things. You do have a couple of things that we've always been told you don't discuss, which is politics and religion. So those are ones I would want to stay far away with. Stay far away from know.
46:53 --> 51:07 So actually, the top three religion is number one. And religion is far more like the mean scores on religion are far greater than other settings. But religion's one, politics is one. That's number three. Actually, the second most negative setting is online gaming. People who use a computer like a PC versus people who use a gaming console. And then sport is number four. So you had three of the top four. And at first I thought the gaming is very interesting, but then if anybody has ever gamed, and I really haven't, but I've talked to a lot of people who have, people will say really, really mean things to each other to try to get in each other's heads during competition. And then within that specific feelings, people who use a PC versus people who use a gaming console. What was explained to me is, well, if somebody's using a PC or a computer to game, they have spent a couple thousand dollars for that. So they look at somebody who's using a gaming console who hasn't spent as much money, they might look at them and say, you know, like, hey, well, I'm. I'm a better gamer because I have this great setup and I have, like, you know, I have invested in this. Whereas somebody who uses like, a piece, a gaming console, they haven't invested as much as this person. And, you know, these are all just perceptions of how these people view the different groups. But yeah, those are the top three religions first, then online gaming, and then politics. And so we created the hierarchy of out group derogation. That is just a hierarchy that shows here are these twelve settings. And so to quickly go down them, if anybody is, if anybody's still listening to this, basically, religion is one. I said then online gaming, politics is three, sport is four. Then we get down into what we call the medium or high negativity group. That's athletic footwear. At number five, mobile phones. At number six, athletic footwear is closely tied to sport. So that kind of makes sense. Then below that, streaming is number seven. General theme park fandom is number eight. And then in the low negativity group, that's where we get to gaming console PC versus Xbox users. And then Disney Parks fandom is ten. Science fiction, eleven comics, twelve. Disney Parks fandom is like, on the scale is a. The mean is a 4.01, which four is neutral. So that basically means, like, people don't have positive or negative views of the outbreak. When you get into science fiction and comics, those scores are actually in the threes, which mean those, they actually have positive views of their. Their out groups. So, you know, like a Star wars fan they actually might have positive views of a Star Trek fan, a Marvel fan might have positive views of DC. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that they're, you know, if you are a fan of Marvel, you've probably also readdeveloped DC. If you're a fan of Star wars, you've probably also watched Star Trek at some point. But also those two groups, much like kind of Disney fandom or Disney adults, they sort of have this larger out group of people telling them, you shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be as invested in this as you are. So they kind of formed this larger in group, if you will. Like, you might be a fan of Marvel or DC, and so you're in these smaller ingroups, but you're a fan of comics overall. So you're in this in group together. And then, like, everybody telling you you should age out of it or shouldn't read comics anymore, like, they're kind of treated as the out group, that type of thing.
51:08 --> 51:20 And a lot of those that you talked about, they do kind of cross paths with Disney. You talk about comics and Sci-Fi Disney parks, theme parks, all of those things.
51:20 --> 51:21 So.
51:21 --> 51:35 And you kind of even got into it at all. But maybe I'm looking for, like, a definitive, you think about this, but, like, what do you think us Disney fans can learn from all this data about comparison studies and learn about our Disney.
51:35 --> 59:08 Fandom with the hierarchy of out group derogation? We also did a spectrum, the out group derogation spectrum, just so we could, like, visually show people. Here's where all of these groups fall on this spectrum from, from more positive to more negative. And so, like, people can see that and they can say, okay, that's, that's really interesting. Like, religion's way over here in the very, very negative. And then you have to go a little bit of distance. You get to online gaming. You get to politics and sport. But look over at this side, you, you know, here's comics and science fiction. So one thing that I looked at after that is how many of these group settings is Disney involved in? And out of the six, I'm sorry, out of the twelve, there are actually six groups that Disney has some type of involvement with. They have been involved with sport. They are, they've, they've owned sport teams. They've worked with the Olympics. They have, they own ESPN. They are involved in streaming because of Disney. Plus they are involved in theme parks. Obviously, they're involved in Disney parks. That's very specific to them, and then they're involved with science fiction because of Star Wars wars and comics because of Marvel. With the exception of sport. Sport is in that high negativity group. But the rest of the five, they're in that medium to low negativity group or low negativity group. So you have streaming and theme parks are in that medium negativity group, but then you have Disney parks, comics, or science fiction and comics. They're all in the low negativity group. And so what's really, really cool is there's something called the extended contact hypothesis, which basically says the more you interact with somebody who is not from your group, and if you find connections with that person, and you continually interact with that person, maybe the more you start to understand that person, that doesn't mean you agree with them. And there's actually, there's a really, really great book on political discourse by a person. His last name is Hibbing, can't remember his first name, but basically his whole thesis of the book is, you want to understand where this comes from and where people come from. Not so you can change their minds, but we have to live with each other, right? We're all in this society together. You need to know how to essentially coexist with people, if nothing else. And so looking at especially those three settings that are in the low negativity group, Disney parks, science fiction, and comics, those three settings could potentially be a common interest for people that could kind of. That's the thing people could coalesce about around. So at the very beginning, you asked me, what is the specific like? Is there a specific person who's, you know, more likely to be a Disney fan? And I said, there really isn't. And that's the awesome thing about it, is because Disney is one of those brands that cuts over a wide swath of our society where it gets people from, you know, different religions, it gets people from different political persuasions, it gets people from different, you know, Yankees fans and Boston Red Sox fans love Disney. It gets people who game over PC or game over a console. You know, it could be one of these areas where it's this connection for people, and the same thing with comics, the same thing with science fiction, Star wars, and Marvel fandoms. But what's really, really cool about Disney is we also talked earlier about the parks, and some people are specifically fans of the parks. It's as though people have talked about how sport resembles a religion, and people have talked about how Disney sort of resembles a religion, and not to, I don't want to be blasphemous for anybody. But what they mean by that is some of the things that people experience in, like, a religious setting, they can also experience in these other settings. And the theme parks is like the gathering place for Disney fans, right? I mean, one reason you said you started your podcast was because people can't get to the Disney parks all the time. So where's another place to gather? Like, you have the Disney parks as, like, that might be like the kind of tier one mecca of, like, places to gather for a Disney Parks fan or a Disney fan. But then you also have all these online communities that we participate in, and you have these friendships that have been built, and, yes, they've been built online. People may never meet each other, but they share this fandom of Disney. I've talked to so many people that said, that have said, you know, they've never met the people they come converse with about Disney online, but they have become such an integral part of their life. They share life events with them, not just Disney related things. They're sharing life events with each other, which is, which is absolutely beautiful when you think about it. And so that's like, that's why I feel like Disney, through its subsidiaries, through its parks, you don't really want to go with sport, probably, but through all these other, like, subsidiaries in these other areas, could be this catalyst for being a connection between people, which is really, really cool. And if we have that connection, then maybe you have somebody who, they don't agree on politics or they don't agree on religion, but they don't agree on what sports team to follow. They don't agree if they like Nike or Adidas, whatever, but they know they like Disney. And so they can always talk about Disney. And that's very, very important. And the last thing I'll say is, because you think of the number of movies where, and typically people are talking about sport when they do it. I'm thinking of the movie city slickers where somebody asks one of the characters, why is sports so important to you? Like, it's just grown men playing kids games, right? And the person said, when, yes, it's grown men playing kids games, but when they were a teenager and couldn't talk to their father about anything else, they could talk about sport. That is Disney for a lot of people. Also, they may not want to talk about other issues. And if you feel comfortable enough where then you can talk about issues that maybe you disagree on. Great. If you never get to that point, you still have this connection, and you still kind of build this camaraderie with. With people in our society. So. So that. That's basically what. What all of that means after a 1520 minutes description. That's okay.
59:08 --> 59:53 That's okay. Cause it makes me feel. It makes me feel something good about our Disney fandom. And we're in a. We're in a place, too, where, like, us Disney adults, I'm gonna call myself a Disney adult. I don't know if you refer to yourself as one as well, but Disney adults were these super, you know, nerdy Disney fans who are adults and have kind of. It's stuck with us all our lives, and sometimes we get a lot of contention online for being Disney adults. And people like to make fun of Disney adults. But is it really, like, are the Disney adults like, the super connectors? Is it our Disney fandom that is possibly the thing that can unite people? What do you think about that idea?
59:54 --> 01:08:01 So what's so interesting to me about, like, Disney adults this term? Disney adults. First of all, like, you asked me if I consider myself a Disney adult. I do, because, like, reading enough about it and talking to enough people about it, I realize, hey, that's me. Like, I mean, when you break down what Disney adult means, it means you are an adulthood and you are a fan of Disney. Like, that's what it. That's what it is. You know, and it's used to. It's used, like, in this derogatory way for people, this negative way to describe people. You can define yourself, and you can define what you want to be, but you also kind of look to other people to help you define what you are. You know, if other people look at you in a certain way and they think you're hardworking or whatever, well, then you are. Like, that's the way people view you. And if that's something that. That matches with how you see yourself, that's really, really good. You know, if you see yourself as hardworking and other people see you as somebody who's. Who's not, well, then you kind of have that conflict there, and you need to figure out how to fix that for yourself, for happiness. So I think a lot of people use the term Disney adult in a negative way because they don't understand what it is. And I have heard Disney adults kind of make the statement like, well, people just call us Disney adults and try to do it in a mean way because that's because they're unhappy, because they, you know, they've lost their imagination or they've lost their ability to like, have fun with Disney and things like that. I wouldn't say that because I don't know that person. I don't know somebody who is saying it in a negative way. What I think happens is they don't understand. And when you start talking to somebody about, let's say somebody says, like, oh, Disney adults, that's so, like, know, that's, that's childish. Then you start asking somebody, well, what do you really believe in? What are you, like, what makes you happy? Maybe it's reading books. Maybe it is. Maybe it's going to concerts. Maybe it's going to Taylor Swift concerts. A lot of people did over the last two years, two summers, right? Or a lot of people went to the movie theaters. A lot of people are streaming it on Disney. Plus now you find, or maybe it is that person who, they love sports and they have since a child, their childhood, and here's the re, and then you ask them, why do you love that? What do you get from that? And they get, you know, a lot of times people will say things like, well, I feel fulfilled. If, if something good happens to my team, then I feel like I can do things, like, on my own as well. So I have this, like, vicarious achievement through, through our team success. If I go to a concert and I see, like, Taylor Swift perform, then I feel like I can be more creative. I feel more inspired to do things, you know, like, I mean, watch videos of a Taylor Swift concert and look at the number of people crying at a Taylor Swift concert. It's the same as watching when a team wins a championship. How many people at the, at that, in that arena or that stadium or in the parade, when they have their parade are just cheering and crying and it's just like that. Their inhibitions are gone. They feel like a child again. They feel just happy. That is, like, fulfillment for them. That's what it is for people who are labeled as Disney adults as well. I went one time on a business trip, and I was by myself. And so I'm like, you know, kind of, I'm walking through the parks trying to very quietly, like, video the parks so the boys could watch. And I'm, like, tearing up because, like, I'm having such, it's, it was such a weird, like, mix of emotions. I'm having such a great time because I'm in Disneyland also. Like, I wish my family could be there. I wish, like, my wife and the boys could enjoy all of that and experience that. And then, like, you know, there's the guilt also, like, yeah, I, like, they're in school right now. I'm here. I'm working. Don't worry. Like, you start justifying things to yourself. But, like, when I was on that trip, I went and I made a point to watch the, like, the opening ceremony or whatever in front of the castle. Like, I was standing at the castle and, yes, I was, like, at the rope. Like, I was the first person to walk through when they dropped the rope. And I'm watching this. I'd never watched it before, and I'm just crying, looking at all these characters and, like, fairy godmother coming out and saying, like, you know, we hope you have a great day. And. And then, because it makes me start thinking, you know, there are people out of the, you know, 30 people around me, probably 15 people have been to a Disney park before, but there are also those people who have never done this, and this is the time that they get to experience it, and they're going all out. And I just got finished talking to people who said, you know, as, as former cast members, they. Some of the interactions they had, just seeing the excitement on people's faces was just so, well, I'll say magical, but so emotional as well. That's what people don't understand. When people want to say, like, oh, somebody's a Disney adult, and they're meaning it like, well, they need to grow up, well, instead of asking that person like, oh, well, or instead of saying, well, you just don't, like, you're a fan of something. And I think that's crazy also, you know, like, instead of, like, kind of bouncing off and trying to, like, bounce off with negativity, if you ask that person, well, what is it that. What is it that makes you feel whole, or what is it that makes you cry tears of joy? That's like, you know, people would probably start with family, friends, things like that, but eventually they're going to get to, it's when I listen to music, it's when I go to live theater, it's when I go to a concert, you know, whatever it is. And then I hopefully that kind of builds that understanding. I have never felt like the term Disney adult is negative. I know it's used in negative ways. I generally, I don't look at myself in a negative way, so that would make sense. If I don't look at myself in a negative way. If I look at the label in a negative way, well, there's that conflict I was talking about. But one thing that feels really, really good to me is the number of people who have started to take that term, take that label and turn it into something positive. And we've seen that throughout. We've seen that in many instances where people will take, you know, here's a term somebody or label somebody wants to use in a negative way, and they just, they're like, oh, yeah, that's me. Like, I love it. You know, people, you know, hey, you're a comics fan. You need to grow up. Okay, I did grow up, but I still love comics. You know, I still love going to Disney Parks. I love all of this stuff. So it feels really good to me to see people kind of turning it into something that's positive also.
01:08:02 --> 01:08:38 Yeah, I totally agree. I like that we can kind of reclaim it as our own and see it as a good thing, as a positive. And I think you've shared a lot of things that we can be excited about and positive about with our Disney fandom today. So Cody, thanks so much for keeping me company on the show today. And I do have to give a quick, yeah, I do have to give a quick plug for your show since I was just a guest on it. And that's the being a fan of Disney podcast. But you have so much other cool stuff going on with being a fan of Disney. So where can we find you online to catch up with all that stuff?
01:08:39 --> 01:10:24 You can follow the public group on Facebook. Being a fan of Disney, people can find me on Facebook as well. Just Cody Havert, but like on threads and Instagram now. It's so great. Everything's like now those two things are kind of linked. It's Cody Habbert. Cody dot h a v a r d. And I post things about Disney there. I post thing, just general stories. I post things about the class there. If you want more information about the class, sharedperspectives.org is the website where that kind of links to work. I've done in sport with a website that was called sportrivalry.com. now it's just LinkedIn, part of shared perspectives.org dot. But there's also, you can access the book there. Being a fan of Disney, the podcast is available wherever you get your podcast. Being a fan of Disney, the book available on Amazon. It's Kindle hardback paperback. I did an audible version of it, which is so fun, but it's really, really cool. And then some other, if you go to shared perspectives.org, comma, you can see some other projects I'm working on. I'm trying to write a like for, for young readers and teenagers now about some of the research that I've done and how it can impact people. So, yeah, look me up on social media, go to the website, follow the, follow the show, and you could search me on YouTube as well. There's a channel for being a fan of Disney also.
01:10:25 --> 01:10:37 So, yeah, there's so there's so many great ways to find all of Cody's work, for sure. And I know I've been exploring it since being on his show and having him on this show. So then, yeah, again, thank you so much for coming on.
01:10:37 --> 01:10:40 Thank you. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks a lot.
01:10:40 --> 01:11:44 Yeah. And so I want to know what you feel about our Disney fandom, our community. So let me know on, you could leave comments on YouTube, or you could find me on Instagram and threads at the Synergy Loves company. And because our fandom is a community, could you share the show with a friend of yours who would enjoy synergy loves company? Tell them about this episode, maybe another one that's your favorite. Send them a link on social media. Heck, you could tag me in it and I'll say hi. And. Or you could just tell them to visit synergy lovescompany.com. and remember, this show is listener supported. There's no sponsors. It's just you and me. So if you feel like you're getting something out of the podcast and you want to show your appreciation, you can support the show on Ko fi. There you can donate any amount you'd like, and it helps me keep producing the show. But no matter how you decide to support the show, I really appreciate the time you spend with me. So thank you, and thanks for exploring Disney's connections with me. And until next time, keep discovering the magic in everything.