Evolution online: trolling and moral outrage

So there may be something about online social media culture that can encourage mean behaviour. Unlike hunter-gatherer societies, which rely on cooperation to survive and have rules for sharing food, for example, social media has weak institutions. It offers physical distance, relative anonymity and little reputational or punitive risk for bad behaviour. If you’re mean, no-one you know is going to see.

Unlike in the offline world, there is little or no personal risk in confronting and exposing someone. And it feeds itself. “If you punish somebody for violating a norm, that makes you seem more trustworthy to others, so you can broadcast your moral character by expressing outrage and punishing social norm violations,” Crockett says.

“When you go from offline – where you might boost your reputation for whoever happens to be standing around at the moment – to online, where you broadcast it to your entire social network, then that dramatically amplifies the personal rewards of expressing outrage.”