The socially dominant troll: Acceptance attitudes towards trolling

Abstract

Online abusive behaviour, such as trolling, presents a contemporary societal issue with serious consequences for its victims. It is unclear whether trolling behaviours arise from innate personality variables and/or are cultivated through an environment of contextual norms. This study aimed to investigate whether an individual's Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) or the context of the Facebook post (i.e opinionated post) played a role in trolling attitudes and how empathy influences these relationships. Participant's (N = 381) SDO levels and previous engagement in trolling were measured. Participants were exposed to either an empathetic or a neutral prime to manipulate state empathy, followed by either an opinionated or neutral fictional Facebook post which had received trolling comments. General acceptance of trolling behaviours was assessed. Findings demonstrated that the higher the level of SDO, the more likely a participant was to report that they had previously engaged in trolling and had a greater acceptance of trolling behaviours. There was no significant effect of ‘context’ or empathetic prime. However, exploratory analysis revealed that empathy partially mediates the relationship between SDO and trolling acceptance attitudes. Overall, these findings suggest that trolling interventions should focus on overriding the negative effects of antisocial personality traits such as SDO.