Have there been any psychological studies done on the phenomena of cultural and religious identity theft?

Gotta put a second vote in here, henna is in no way cultural misappropriation. Henna's been used by dozens of cultures for thousands of years for dozens of different reasons, from spiritual and ritual, to medicinal, to purely aesthetic, there was no "original" use of henna. Glaringly obvious example to me is tattoos of kanji or hanzi on people that do not speak any Mandarin, Cantonese, or Japanese.

So many examples of that in tattoos, Native American symbols on European descended people, Irish and Celtic imagery on people that can't even claim to be Irish on St. Paddy's, multiple examples of tattoos from primitive cultures that have very specific meanings that some d-bag got on themselves because they thought it was pretty. I've even see a tattoo of a Star of David on a non-Jew, which is super lame if you know anything about tattoos and Judaism.

It is White and Black people claiming to be "part-Cherokee" based on nothing but family lore and no proof whatsoever, and then laying claim to Indian identity. They will claim this "heritage" and identity without having any tribal affiliation and often they mock tribal enrollment and maintaining this affiliation, as if it is not important at all...and they skew history to fit their erroneous family story. Once they've internalized the bogus claim of Indian blood and formed a pseudo-identity, based on nothing but the story itself, they will often claim "Native American" status on official forms.

Elizabeth Warren is a perfect example of this. This is not benign either. These people are fully American and have no tribal affilation and they think as non-tribal people.

Yet, they view Indian identity as rather superficial and only in terms of degrees of "blood." They are usually the biggest proponents of assimilation and dissolution of tribal nations, even if unintentionally.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.