STUDY: Internet trolls are sadists and psychopaths, likely to be right-wingers, and some are paid.

[Triana]

In general, the people who troll have some nasty psychological traits, according to a study published in the September issue of Personality and Individual Differences. What these two online studies found is both disturbing and validating.

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.

. . .

Then there are the trolls that are paid by Fox News to troll liberal and progressive websites, as noted by Addicting Info. Fox's PR folks create fake accounts for the trolls to use. They get paid very little; five to ten cents per post, but they really enjoy their work. Their vicious attacks are designed to drive away anyone but right-wingers from a site. Some of these trolls don't even live in the United States.

Alternet reports on the documentary AstroTurf Wars, which secretly recorded a group with ties to the Koch Brothers training their paid right-wing trolls before deploying them.


. . .

If we're seeing more right-wing trolls than left-wing trolls online, that's because if the presence of psychopathic "dark tetrad" traits are any indicator, conservatives have more psychopathic traits to begin with. An earlier AATTP article reports on studies that show conservatives (and the CEOs they serve) are more likely to be manipulative, sadistic, self-serving sociopaths to begin with.


THE REST:

http://aattp.org/right-wing-trolls-are-psychopaths-studies-show/

[Delphinus]

1. That's pretty fascinating:

"conservatives have more psychopathic traits to begin with".

[Triana]

3. Not surprising though

I have 'em in my family. Total loons IMO. Not blood-related thank heavens but someone was silly enough to marry one.

[pipoman]

2. I've wondered if some of the gun control posters are

Bloomberg paid. I might think the other side was NRA paid, but I think there are enough true believers they don't need to pay.

[Historic NY]

4. Just go over to AOL news stories...

comments its a garden of paid trolls. The comments are always in unison, always anti-Obam no matter the substance of the original story, most don't even reflect the topic of the story. They have a patterns of going back and agreeing with each other also. A liberal or other point of view is immediately attacked in an effort to squelch other opinions.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists

[Xyzse]

5. Dang, 5-10 cents per post?

That's more than you can get from grinding equipment and selling it online in an MMO.