ONE IN 20 PEOPLE ARE INTERNET TROLLS, WITH THE ATTRIBUTES OF SADISTS AND PSYCHOPATHS, ACCORDING TO PAPER IN SCIENCEDIRECT

Alex Kidman National technology writer News Limited Network February 17, 2014 

Revealed ... So much for the excuse that trolling is twisted fun. A study has found internet trolls are sick people. Picture: Thinkstock Source: Supplied

 
One in twenty online users deliberately engage in trolling, according to a new study that also identifies those users as having the classic traits of sadism, narcissism, psychopathy and Machievellianism. 

The Canadian study of 1215 people, published in ScienceDirect, asked respondents to identify the type of activities they got up to online.

This was cross-checked against other queries designed to check for the classic traits of people who fall into the “Dark Tetrad” of psychological behaviours; Machiavellianism (or willingness to manipulate people), narcissism (self-obsession), psychopathy (lack of empathy) and sadism (pleasure from suffering).

Those who identified themselves as frequent trolls slotted neatly into the categories for sadism most strongly, and narcissism the least, suggesting that it’s much more to do with enjoyment of suffering from the troll’s perspective than in boosting the troll’s self-esteem per se.

The study also assessed these traits against other common online activities such as chatting or debating, but only the respondents who self-identified as trolls matched strongly with strong negative behavioural traits.

The study identified, however, that trolls are still the internet minority, suggesting that a little over five per cent of those surveyed actively trolled, compared to more than forty per cent of online users who never commented at all.

  

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