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Thursday, May 24, 2012

The reason for trolls

Posted Tuesday, November 20, 2007, at 12:06 PM

It turns out there's a psychological explanation for "trolling," the practice of leaving nasty, angry, inflammatory messages on message boards, blogs and other open-comment web sites:

Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity -- a process called deindividuation -- we are less likely to stick to social norms…the same thing happens with online communication such as email.

It's a fascinating post; go read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Gavin Richardson.


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Count me in as agreed 100%

-- Posted by LauraSFT on Tue, Nov 20, 2007, at 12:16 PM


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John I. Carney
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John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette.
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