Almost half of the planet’s population now has access to the Internet, and approximately one in three participates regularly on social media. But this increased opportunity to socialize and communicate in a virtual environment has offered new avenues for antisocial behavior, troll behavior. We already know that the Internet is not a safe place to debate. One idea to explain this is that the anonymity status behind the screens makes some users a nuisance. However, this argument is not true, according to various investigations.
The Internet does not turn people into their worst version, but acts as a massive speaker for the existing ones. That is, whoever is an online cretin, probably is also one in person.
The study. For those who do not know, Internet trolling is defined as malicious behavior online, characterized by aggressive and deliberate provocation by others. Seek to annoy and harm through messages and posts. A study from the University of Aarhus indicates that the Internet is not responsible for making people more aggressive when participating in virtual discussions, but rather makes the behavior of more aggressive people more visible.
To explain the fact that troll is born and not made, more than 8,000 Americans and Danes were surveyed about their experiences and behavior in online and offline discussions. Despite differences in political institutions and levels of political polarization, those who most wanted to attract attention in both countries were the main culprits of troll hostility.
Why? Just as complicated is establishing the reason why people perceive the online environment as more hostile than interaction abroad. The team considered the mismatch hypothesis, which refers to the theory that there is a conflict between human adaptation for face-to-face interpersonal interaction and the impersonal digital environment. Something like the idea that those who would be nicer in person might be more inclined to be unpleasant to other Internet users under pseudonyms. But there is little evidence for this.
“There are many psychological reasons why we might have a harder time controlling our temper online. We don’t see the faces of those we argue with and the fast-paced written form of communication can easily lead to misunderstandings. However, we also know from research. psychological that not everyone has a personality that is equally predisposed to aggression “, Alexander Bor explained, study author.
Anonymity is still a reflection. Instead, the data pointed to online interactions that simply largely mirrored outside behavior, with people predisposed to aggressive behavior as malicious in person as behind a veil of anonymity, and choosing to be stupid as part of a deliberate strategy, in rather than as a consequence of the format.
The researchers concluded that “it is not born out of ignorance” and aggressive people are fully aware of how damaging their actions are. The Internet is not responsible for making people aggressive – they use the features of the Internet for their own purposes. In addition, the fact that these discussions occur on large platforms makes troll behavior much more visible than the behavior of that same person in their daily life.
Network toxicity. The finding that people are not more or less prone to toxic behaviors on the Internet dovetails with some previous studies that emphasize that virtual discussions are disproportionately driven by ill-intentioned people taking advantage of the featured speaker. One study suggested that the most aggressive trolls may tend to have high cognitive empathy, which allows them to identify when they are pressing someone else’s buttons, but low affective empathy, which allows them to avoid feeling bad or internalize the suffering they cause .
Who are they and why do they do it? That same study showed that gender, psychopathy, and sadism were all independent predictors of trolling. That is, if you are a man, have a lot of psychopathy or a lot of sadism, you are more likely to be a troll. The most important is sadism. The more someone enjoys hurting others, the more likely they are to become a troll.
The importance of psychopathy in the results also indicates that trolls have an empathy deficit, particularly when it comes to their ability to internalize other people’s emotions. On top of that, the interplay between high sadism and high self-esteem suggests that trolls are not trolling because they have low self-esteem. Quite the opposite. The more someone enjoys hurting others and the better they feel about themselves, the more likely they are to be a troll.
Don’t feed the troll. Unfortunately, the psychological profile of an internet troll means that you won’t go far enough to appeal to their sense of humanity. His character is much more complex, which makes controlling behavior even more challenging. Some research has found that showing the troll that he has annoyed you can only reinforce his behavior. It seems that the popular saying is correct: do not feed the trolls and do not give them what they are looking for.