While I do not generally comment publicly on the activities of celebrities, I felt the need to address something about Will Smith’s Oscar Slap. Not the slap itself, nor the joke that pre-empted it, but about some of the confusion that has surfaced about the context. Specifically, about seeing Will laughing at the joke just prior to his very exaggerated response. Many people have asked what is going on there. Why? Why is he laughing and then slapping? Was it staged? What was going on?
Let’s assume that it was not staged, as some have suggested. What we are seeing is a prime example of what is called Reaction Formation. This is a psychological self-defense mechanism that all humans employ in which a person unconsciously replaces one impulse or behavior that is unacceptable or unwanted with an opposite, often exaggerated one.
In this instance, we see Will laughing at a joke that the audience is participating in. He is engaged in group think and shared behavior, until he looks over and sees the pain on his wife’s face. This instantly results in some cognitive dissonance as he attempts to reconcile what he is doing and feeling versus what he is seeing from his wife. The result of which could be an intense spike of guilt. He is participating in the public hurt and humiliation of someone he loves who is experiencing pain in that instance. Not an acceptable or appropriate behavior. That instantly creates a cascade effect in which he needs that pain of guilt to be removed, so it is replaced with intense anger, a secondary emotion. He further then needs to express that need to resolve the feelings of guilt or shame. The result, a very exaggerated response in which he publicly targets Chris and visits upon him a more aggressive form of humiliation and warns him very loudly to stop doing what he is doing.
This is largely speculative, of course, as I am not a party of their relationship specifics, nor the charged atmosphere in which this happened. Also, there are more factors and complexity going on in this situation that can be pointed out, but this situation offers us a glimpse of what Reaction Formation looks like. This is a mechanism that all humans have and use. You do it. I do it. Everyone does it. Along with a myriad of other psychological defense and bias mechanisms. While this is not an attempt to excuse any of the associate behavior, understanding what is happening can create different choices about how it is viewed and responded to.
Mike Gorday, MA