Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People
 

"...The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

It is hard to underplay the results: The study found correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet."

More at Slate.

My alma mater!!

very interesting indeed.

I have always found it interesting to see how people act when they know they have complete anonymity and feel that there will be no long term consequences to their actions. I assume a lot of this data came from 4chan