REAL LIFE NEWS: SCIENCE SAYS INTERNET TROLLS ARE PSYCHOPATHS
by Hazed
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of an online troll, then you will probably already know that they are vile, vile people. But now science has confirmed that internet trolls are narcissistic, sadistic psychopaths.
A new study published by some Canadian researchers confirms that people who deliberately post comments online that are designed to upset people or disrupt a discussion score highly on a scale called the Dark Tetrad that ranks four personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism.
The research looked at those people whose posts have no purpose other than to upset other people, and who lie, exaggerate and deliberately offend in order to get a response – your classic trolls. They surveyed over 1,200 people and gave each of them personality tests and asked them to complete a survey about their internet commenting behaviour.
They found that those who said trolling was their favourite online activity scored much highest on the Dark Tetrad than others. The source link below shows a graph illustrating how the Dark Tetrad scores spike for the trolls, compared to everybody else.
As the researchers say in their paper:
“…the associations between sadism and GAIT (Global Assessment of Internet Trolling) scores were so strong that it might be said that online trolls are prototypical everyday sadists.”
Both trolls and sadists, say the authors, “feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun… and the internet is their playground.”
Wow. No wonder they cause such havoc online.
