The Science of Trolls

Interesting article from New Scientist on the psychology of web trolls.

Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity – a process called deindividuation – we are less likely to stick to social norms. For example, in the 1960s Leon Mann studied a nasty phenomenon called “suicide baiting” – when someone threatening to jump from a high building is encouraged to do so by bystanders. Mann found that people were more likely to do this if they were part of a large crowd, if the jumper was above the 7th floor, and if it was dark. These are all factors that allowed the observers to lose their own individuality.

Social psychologist Nicholas Epley argues that much the same thing happens with online communication such as email. Psychologically, we are “distant” from the person we’re talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we’re more prone to aggressive behaviour, he says.

Another factor influencing online communication, according to Epley, is simply the risk of miscommunication involved with text-based messages, which are inherently more ambiguous. At the same time, he notes, email “has the feel of informality – we just fire something off”, even though we probably ought to treat it with the same care as a written letter. And, as most people probably know, this can cause problems for both the sender and the receiver.

I also believe there is another phenomena there, which is an extension of group think. When people belong to a certain group, they feel empowered to be bolder than they normally are, to cut loose. Because they think their friends have their back. So when you get a horde of people coming to a site to trash the owner, as happened to me recently, they believe they are in the right because their group is going along with it. People often don’t want to do something unless others do it. Then they believe its OK. This is why we see examples of bad behavior from mobs time and time again. The individual people would probably never do something like that, but ginned up on angry emotions by the crowd, they move like fish in a school or herds of enraged water buffalo. The herd mentality is really a nasty thing.

And like I said, AGW seems to be a herd mentality thing. Most people don’t know good science from junk science. So if a bunch of scientists say something, they just shrug and accept it. Just as when a popular website makes some claim, the fans of that site get all riled up like sports crowds for their team. It then becomes an anti-intellectual exercise. 

<< Back to main