What is the psychology behind trolling?

Question

For those new to the internet, trolling is an activity where one person intentionally tries to upset other members of the same community, presumably for entertainment.

This has been informally addressed in the media, normally positing that the anonymity of the internet gives rise to more extreme behaviors,

• but is that the explanation research supports?
• And if it is, how does the process of enabling occur?
• And more broadly, why do people derive pleasure from the anger of others within the same group?
• Lastly, is this behavioral phenomenon unique to the internet era, or are there historical predecessors involving similar causal mechanisms?

Answer 1

There are a few references to the scientific literature on trolling in the wikipedia article

Some psychologists have suggested that flaming would be caused by deindividuation or decreased self-evaluation: the anonymity of online postings would lead to disinhibition amongst individuals (Kiesler et al, 1984). Others have suggested that although flaming and trolling is often unpleasant, it may be a form of normative behavior that expresses the social identity of a certain user group (Lea et al, 1992; Postmes et al, 1998).

References

• Kiesler, S. , J. Siegel and T.W. McGuire (1984). "Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication". American Psychologist 39 (10): 1123–1134. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.39.10.1123. LINK
• Lea, M., T. O'Shea, P. Fung and R. Spears (1992). "'Flaming' in Computer-Mediated Communication: observation, explanations, implications". Contexts of Computer-Mediated Communication: 89–112.
• Postmes, T., Spears, R., & Lea, M. (1998). "Breaching or building social boundaries? SIDE-effects of computer-mediated communication". Communication Research (25): 689–715. FREE PDF

Answer 2

From an article by the NY times.

Trolling, defined as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative messages in public forums, is a problem as old as the Internet itself, although its roots go much farther back. Even in the fourth century B.C., Plato touched upon the subject of anonymity and morality in his parable of the ring of Gyges.

...

Psychological research has proven again and again that anonymity increases unethical behavior. Road rage bubbles up in the relative anonymity of one’s car. And in the online world, which can offer total anonymity, the effect is even more pronounced. People — even ordinary, good people — often change their behavior in radical ways. There’s even a term for it: the online disinhibition effect.

Answer 3

The article, "Conversation Hackers", by the International Cognition & Culture Institute describes:

Trolls happen to possess to an extreme degree a motivation that is common to all humans: a motivation to argue. That motivation is specific to argumentation itself, and can be satisfied even when the usual goals of argumentation – convincing someone of thinking or doing something – have not been met at all. We readily argue with people we have no realistic hope of convincing. Trolls are special because 1) this motivation is very powerful in them and 2) they don't just seize occasions of satisfying it as they present themselves ; sometimes, they deliberately create these occasions, by setting up rigged conversations.

The article mentiones Sperber and Mercier's "argumentative theory" of human reasoning, which is a fascinating paper in its own right.

References

• Mercier, H. and Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(02):57-74. FREE PDF

Answer 4

Vittorio Gallese, discoverer of the mirror neurons, says in an interview in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, that in virtual, indirect communication (as opposed to personal, face-to-face communication) there is less empathy because the mirror neurons don't get triggered as easily if we cannot witness the emotions of our conversational partners.

Paraphrase:

What worries me more than violent computer games is the we communicate more and more fequently over telephone and computer. Communities where people come together physically are becoming increasingly rare. But we know from our experiments that for empathy it is not the same wether we see a person on a monitor or eye to eye. If you communicate with your conversational partner only over email or chat, your image of him completely disappears.

If you do not face a person directly, but only listen to them on the phone or read what they write on the internet, you can no longer feel what they feel. All you can do is attempt to cognitively understand how they feel, similar to an autist. But this is much more complicated and error prone. That is why we prefer the physical company of other people, because they understand us without long explanations – simply by looking at us.

Simon Baron-Cohen, in Zero Degrees of Empathy, argues on the basis of his research that empathy erosion lies at the heart of cruelty.

In short:

Disembodied communication hinders empathy, and thus facilitates cruelty.

Answer 5

Trolling is a complex subject now under serious study in science fields (e.g. sociology, psychology, social networking, etc.), but arguably it is not new behavior. Something like it has probably existed as long as humans have, even though the term "trolling" seems to originate in cyberspace. Wikipedia etymology indicates it significantly predates cyberspace. Imagine comments or cartoons left on a public bulletin board, or even graffiti could be seen as a form/type of "trolling". Anonymity/pseudonymity certainly relate to it (possibly increasing it), but of course it happens even with full identification.

Certainly cyberspace seems to possess aspects that can amplify the behavior. However, people sometimes just use the word "troll" as a derogatory epithet against people they merely don't like/disagree with, or e.g. those who are sarcastic with genuine but controversial views, so it can sometimes be really difficult to classify objectively. Somewhat like other terms such as "stalker", "sexual harassment", "sexual offender" etc., it's a "hot button" term with definition that can apparently shift significantly depending on context, and that carries high charge in cyberspace & modern era. It also ties in with an increase in social awareness/sensitivity of bullying. It also has connections to gossip.

Just ran across this new scientific paper (Feb. 2014) apparently getting major media coverage that states it's correlated with what is known as the so-called "dark tetrad" of character features.

• Trolls just want to have fun. Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, Erin E. Buckels, Paul D. Trapnell, Delroy L. Paulhus:

  In two online studies (total $N = 1215$), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism.