Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-05T02:45:39.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2021

ALEXANDER BOR Open the ORCID record for ALEXANDER BOR [Opens in a new window]  and
MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN Open the ORCID record for MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN [Opens in a new window]
ALEXANDER BOR*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Denmark
MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Denmark
*
Alexander Bor, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark, [email protected].
Michael Bang Petersen, Professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark, [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why are online discussions about politics more hostile than offline discussions? A popular answer argues that human psychology is tailored for face-to-face interaction and people’s behavior therefore changes for the worse in impersonal online discussions. We provide a theoretical formalization and empirical test of this explanation: the mismatch hypothesis. We argue that mismatches between human psychology and novel features of online environments could (a) change people’s behavior, (b) create adverse selection effects, and (c) bias people’s perceptions. Across eight studies, leveraging cross-national surveys and behavioral experiments (total N = 8,434), we test the mismatch hypothesis but only find evidence for limited selection effects. Instead, hostile political discussions are the result of status-driven individuals who are drawn to politics and are equally hostile both online and offline. Finally, we offer initial evidence that online discussions feel more hostile, in part, because the behavior of such individuals is more visible online than offline.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 116 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aguinis, Herman, and Bradley, Kyle J.. 2014. “Best Practice Recommendations for Designing and Implementing Experimental Vignette Methodology Studies.” Organizational Research Methods 17 (4): 351–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashton, Michael C., Lee, Kibeom, Pozzebon, Julie A., Visser, Beth A., and Worth, Narnia C.. 2010. “Status-Driven Risk Taking and the Major Dimensions of Personality.” Journal of Research in Personality 44 (6): 734–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baek, Young Min, Wojcieszak, Magdalena, and Carpini, Michael X. Delli. 2012. “Online versus Face-to-Face Deliberation: Who? Why? What? with What Effects?” New Media & Society 14 (3): 363–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bail, Christopher A., Guay, Brian, Maloney, Emily, Combs, Aidan, Hillygus, D. Sunshine, Merhout, Friedolin, Freelon, Deen, and Volfovsky, Alexander. 2020. “Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency’s Impact on the Political Attitudes and Behaviors of American Twitter Users in Late 2017.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (1): 243 LP—250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baltes, Boris B., Dickson, Marcus W., Sherman, Michael P., Bauer, Cara C., and LaGanke, Jacqueline S.. 2002. “Computer-Mediated Communication and Group Decision Making: A Meta-Analysis.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 87 (1): 156–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartusevičius, Henrikas, van Leeuwen, Florian, and Petersen, Michael Bang. 2020. “Dominance-Driven Autocratic Political Orientations Predict Political Violence in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) and Non-WEIRD Samples.” Psychological Science 31 (12): 1511–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bisbee, James, and Larson, Jennifer M.. 2017. “Testing Social Science Network Theories with Online Network Data: An Evaluation of External Validity.” American Political Science Review 111 (3): 502–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohnet, Iris, and Frey, Bruno S.. 1999. “The Sound of Silence in Prisoner’s Dilemma and Dictator Games.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 38: 43–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bor, Alexander, and Petersen, Michael Bang. 2021. “Replication Data for: The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis.” Harvard Dataverse. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/8I6NOT.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, William J., Crockett, M. J., and Van Bavel, Jay J.. 2020. “The MAD Model of Moral Contagion: The Role of Motivation, Attention, and Design in the Spread of Moralized Content Online.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 15 (4): 978–1010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brady, William J., McLoughlin, Killian, Doan, Tuan Nguyen, and Crockett, Molly. 2021. “How Social Learning Amplifies Moral Outrage Expression in Online Social Networks.” PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gf7t5.Google ScholarPubMed
Buckels, Erin E., Trapnell, Paul D., and Paulhus, Delroy L.. 2014. “Trolls Just Want to Have Fun.” Personality and Individual Differences 67 (September): 97–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaplin, William F., John, Oliver P., and Goldberg, Lewis R.. 1988. “Conceptions of States and Traits: Dimensional Attributes with Ideals as Prototypes.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (4): 541–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cheng, Joey T., Tracy, Jessica L., Foulsham, Tom, Kingstone, Alan, and Henrich, Joseph. 2013. “Two Ways to the Top: Evidence That Dominance and Prestige Are Distinct yet Viable Avenues to Social Rank and Influence.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104 (1): 103–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Justin, Bernstein, Michael, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Cristian, and Leskovec, Jure. 2017. “Anyone Can Become a Troll.” In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, chairs. Lee, Charlotte P. and Poltrock, Steve, 1217–30. New York: Association for Computing Machinery Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Kevin, Kenski, Kate, and Rains, Stephen A.. 2014. “Online and Uncivil? Patterns and Determinants of Incivility in Newspaper Website Comments.” Journal of Communication 64 (4): 658–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahlberg, Lincoln. 2001. “The Internet and Democratic Discourse: Exploring the Prospects of Online Deliberative Forums Extending the Public Sphere.” Information, Communication & Society 4 (4): 615–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, Pamela M., and Magaletta, Philip R.. 2006. “The Short-Form Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ-SF): A Validation Study with Federal Offenders.” Assessment 13 (3): 227–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duggan, Maeve. 2017. “Online Harassment 2017.” Pew Research. July 11. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/07/11/online-harassment-2017/.Google Scholar
Eady, Gregory, Nagler, Jonathan, Guess, Andy, Zilinsky, Jan, and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2019. “How Many People Live in Political Bubbles on Social Media? Evidence from Linked Survey and Twitter Data.” SAGE Open 9 (1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019832705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epley, Nicholas, and Dunning, David. 2000. “Feeling ‘Holier than Thou’: Are Self-Serving Assessments Produced by Errors in Self-or Social Prediction?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (6): 861–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eveland, William P., and Hively, Myiah Hutchens. 2009. “Political Discussion Frequency, Network Size, and ‘Heterogeneity’ of Discussion as Predictors of Political Knowledge and Participation.” Journal of Communication 59 (2): 205–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gentzkow, Matthew, and Shapiro, Jesse M.. 2011. “Ideological Segregation Online and Offline.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 126 (4): 1799–1839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., and Rogers, Todd. 2009. “Descriptive Social Norms and Motivation to Vote: Everybody’s Voting and so Should You.” Journal of Politics 71 (1): 178–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Rachel, and Cantijoch, Marta. 2013. “Conceptualizing and Measuring Participation in the Age of the Internet: Is Online Political Engagement Really Different to Offline?” Journal of Politics 75 (3): 701–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorrell, Genevieve, Greenwood, Mark, Roberts, Ian, Maynard, Diana, and Bontcheva, Kalina. 2018. “Online Abuse of UK MPs in 2015 and 2017: Perpetrators, Targets, and Topics.” Working Paper. http://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01498.Google Scholar
Gratz, Kim L., and Roemer, Lizabeth. 2004. “Multidimensional Assessment of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation.” Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 26 (1): 41–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griezel, Lucy, Finger, Linda R., Bodkin-Andrews, Gawaian H., Craven, Rhonda G., and Yeung, Alexander Seeshing. 2012. “Uncovering the Structure of and Gender and Developmental Differences in Cyber Bullying.” Journal of Educational Research 105 (6): 442–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossman, Lev. 2010. “Person of the Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg.” Time, December 15.Google Scholar
Guess, Andrew M. 2015. “Measure for Measure: An Experimental Test of Online Political Media Exposure.” Political Analysis 23 (1): 59–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guess, Andrew M., Munger, Kevin, Nagler, Jonathan, and Tucker, Joshua. 2019. “How Accurate Are Survey Responses on Social Media and Politics?” Political Communication 36 (2): 241–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan, and Rose-Stockwell, Tobias. 2019. “The Dark Psychology of Social Networks.” The Atlantic, December, 6–60.Google Scholar
Hertel, Guido, Geister, Susanne, and Konradt, Udo. 2005. “Managing Virtual Teams: A Review of Current Empirical Research.” Human Resource Management Review 15 (1): 69–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hesse, Bradford W., Werner, Carol M., and Altman, Irwin. 1988. “Temporal Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication.” Computers in Human Behavior 4 (2): 147–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, R. A., and Dunbar, R. I. M.. 2003. “Social Network Size in Humans.” Human Nature 14: 53–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holmes, Marcus. 2013. “The Force of Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Mirror Neurons and the Problem of Intentions.” International Organization 67 (4): 829–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalmoe, Nathan P. 2014. “Fueling the Fire: Violent Metaphors, Trait Aggression, and Support for Political Violence.” Political Communication 31 (4): 545–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurzban, Robert. 2001. “The Social Psychophysics of Cooperation: Nonverbal Communication in a Public Goods Game.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 25: 241–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Norman P., van Vugt, Mark, and Colarelli, Stephen M.. 2018. “The Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis: Implications for Psychological Science.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 27 (1): 38–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lim, Daniel, Condon, Paul, and De Steno, David. 2015. “Mindfulness and Compassion: An Examination of Mechanism and Scalability.” PLoS ONE 10 (2): 1–8.Google ScholarPubMed
Matias, J. Nathan. 2016. “High Impact Questions and Opportunities for Online Harassment Research and Action.” MIT Center for Civic Media, Report. September 7. https://civic.mit.edu/index.html%3Fp=930.html.Google Scholar
Matias, J. Nathan. 2019. “Preventing Harassment and Increasing Group Participation through Social Norms in 2,190 Online Science Discussions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116 (20): 9785–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mendes, Kaitlynn, Ringrose, Jessica, and Keller, Jessalynn. 2018. “#MeToo and the Promise and Pitfalls of Challenging Rape Culture through Digital Feminist Activism.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 25 (2): 236–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Michelle R., and Shavitt, Sharon. 2002. “Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Achievement Values: A Multimethod Examination of Denmark and the United States.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 33 (5): 439–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olaniran, Bolanle. 2002. “Computer-Mediated Communication: A Test of the Impact of Social Cues on the Choice of Medium for Resolving Misunderstandings.” Journal of Educational Technology Systems 31 (2): 205–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Michael Bang, Roepstorff, Andreas, and Serritzlew, Søren. 2009. “Social Capital in the Brain?” Chap. 5 in Handbook of Social Capital: The Troika of Sociology, Political Science and Economics , eds. Svendsen, Gert Tinggaard and Svendsen, Gunnar Lind Haase. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Google Scholar
Petersen, Michael Bang, Osmundsen, Mathias, and Bor, Alexander. 2020. “Beyond Populism: The Psychology of Status-Seeking and Extreme Political Discontent.” Chap. 4 in The Psychology of Populism, eds. Forgas, Joseph, Crano, Bill, and Fiedler, Klaus. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Stig H. R., Bor, Alexander, Osmundsen, Mathias, and Bang Petersen, Michael. 2021. “Super-unsupervised Text Classification for Labeling Online Political Hate.” PsyArXiv. June 8. doi:10.31234/osf.io/8m5dc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ribeiro, Manoel Horta, Ottoni, Raphael, West, Robert, Virgílio, A. F. Almeida, and Meira, Wagner. 2019. “Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube.” Working Paper. http://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, Ian. 2015. “Civility 2.0: A Comparative Analysis of Incivility in Online Political Discussion.” Information Communication and Society 18 (2): 121–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharlemann, Jörn P. W., Eckel, Catherine C., Kacelnik, Alex, and Wilson, Rick K.. 2001. “The Value of a Smile: Game Theory with a Human Face.” Journal of Economic Psychology 22 (5): 617–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Settle, Jaime E. 2018. Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Settle, Jaime E., and Carlson, Taylor N.. 2019. “Opting out of Political Discussions.” Political Communication 36 (3): 476–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, Alexandra A, and Badaan, Vivienne. 2020. “# No2Sectarianism: Experimental Approaches to Reducing Sectarian Hate Speech Online.” American Political Science Review 114 (3): 837–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Jeffry A., and Belsky, Jay. 2008. “Attachment Theory within a Modern Evolutionary Framework.” Chap. 5 in Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Application , 2nd edition, eds. Cassidy, Jude and Shaver, Phillip R.. New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Stein, Joel. 2016. “Tyranny of the Mob.” Time 188 (8): 26–32.Google Scholar
Sydnor, Emily. 2019. Disrespectful Democracy: The Psychology of Political Incivility. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TrygFonden. 2017. “Ytringsfrihed Og Digital Usikkerhed (Freedom of Expression and Digital Uncertainty).” Copenhagen. http://reader.livedition.dk/trygfonden/306/html5/.Google Scholar
Valenzuela, Sebastian, Kim, Yonghwan, and Gil de Zuniga, Homero. 2012. “Social Networks That Matter: Exploring the Role of Political Discussion for Online Political Participation.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 24 (2): 163–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Margo, and Daly, Martin. 1985. “Competitiveness, Risk Taking, and Violence: The Young Male Syndrome.” Ethology and Sociobiology 6 (1): 59–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witschge, Tamara. 2004. “Online Deliberation: Possibilities of the Internet for Deliberative Democracy.” In Democracy Online: The Prospects for Political Renewal through the Internet, ed. Shane, Peter M., 109–122. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wolchover, Natalie. 2012. “Why Is Everyone on the Internet So Angry?” Scientific American, July 25. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-everyone-on-the-internet-so-angry/.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Bor and Petersen Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/8I6NOT
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Bor and Petersen supplementary material

Bor and Petersen supplementary material

Download Bor and Petersen supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.1 MB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.