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. 2023 Oct 10:14:1211023.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1211023. eCollection 2023.

A functionalist approach to online trolling

Lewis Nitschinsk  1 , Stephanie J Tobin  2 , Eric J Vanman  1
Affiliations

A functionalist approach to online trolling

Lewis Nitschinsk et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Online trolling is often linked to sadism and psychopathy. Yet, little research has assessed why people high in these traits seek online environments to achieve their nefarious goals. We employ a functionalist approach to examine whether people high in sadism and psychopathy are motivated to seek the affordances of online environments (e.g., anonymity) to reveal their malevolent self-aspects by engaging in trolling behavior. A sample of 515 university undergraduates (Mage = 20.47) read vignettes depicting trolling incidents and rated the acceptability of the perpetrators' actions and whether they had ever written similar comments. Participants then completed measures of psychopathy, sadism, and toxic anonymous motivations. We find that toxic anonymous motivations partially mediate the relationship between psychopathy and sadism, and online trolling. Whereas trolling is often understood through its underlying personality traits, toxic motivations to seek anonymity may be a more proximal predictor of who is likely to troll online.

Keywords: anonymity; motivations; online; psychopathy; sadism; trolling.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor RG declared a past co-authorship with the author ST.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Toxic anonymous motivations partially mediate the relationship between sadism/psychopathy and trolling acceptance. We report the standardized coefficients for all variables. Each model included Machiavellianism, narcissism, and either psychopathy or sadism as covariates. The numbers in the brackets indicate the direct effect of each model. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Toxic anonymous motivations partially mediate the relationship between sadism/psychopathy and trolling perpetration. We report the standardized coefficients for all variables. Each model included Machiavellianism, narcissism, and either psychopathy or sadism as covariates. The numbers in the brackets indicate the direct effect of each model. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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