Psychology Today has released an
article on internet trolls. They are claiming that all internet trolls are narcissists, psychopaths, and sadists. (Yes I found this on reddit, yes shut up).
Here's an excerpt from the article:
Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response.
What kind of person would do this?
Canadian researchers decided to find out. They conducted two internet studies with over 1,200 people. They gave personality tests to each subject along with a survey about their internet commenting behavior. They were looking for evidence that linked trolling with the Dark Tetrad of personality: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadistic personality. "... the associations between sadism and GAIT (Global Assessment of Internet Trolling) scores were so strong that it might be said that online trolls are prototypical everyday sadists." [emphasis added]
Trolls truly enjoy making you feel bad. To quote the authors once more (because this is a truly quotable article):
"Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun ... and the Internet is their playground!"Here's some sort of graph or something:
I find it hard to believe that we're all evil sadists, but that's just me.
Is psychology today trolling us? I don't even know how they gathered most of this data, and the verbiage used in the article seems questionable. Regardless, do you agree with these accusations?