If you thought trolls were sadistic psychopaths and losers, you were right! [View all]

[MADem]

Here’s the one frightening psychological characteristic that online trolls tend to share

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/heres-the-one-the-one-frightening-psychological-characteristic-that-online-trolls-tend-to-share/

“Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior,” study authors note. “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… Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun… and the internet is their playground!”

A 2015 collaborative study from the University of New South Wales and Miami University found that male trolls who exhibited sexism in gaming, hurling misogynist threats and insults at women online, were particularly likely to be among the crappy players. The scientists observed players in the online first-person shooter game Halo 3, and found that the success of male players informed how they behaved toward women.

“Men who were of lower skill were more positive towards men and more negative towards women,” Michael Kasumovic, one of the study authors, told Wired magazine. “But the really neat result is that when men were of higher skill, they were much more positive to women.”

“In other words,” the Washington Post suggests, “sexist dudes are literally losers.” The Post helped provide a bit more insight into the study findings:

A recent influx of female participants has disrupted a pre-existing social hierarchy. That’s okay for the guys at the top—but for the guys at the bottom, who stand to lose more status, that’s very threatening…. “As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status,” Kasumovic writes, “the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.”

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