By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
If you read articles online and continue into the “comments” section, it doesn’t take long to find them: individuals, usually anonymous, who are engaged in surprisingly hostile and personal exchanges with strangers — and they seem to relish the sport. Who are these people, I’ll often wonder, and what motivates this odd hobby of picking fights online? There is a name for them: “Internet Trolls.” Not to be confused with patent trolls, who obtain patent rights for the sole purpose of winning damages in litigation, the internet trolls are those who engage in communication looking to spark controversy, taking positions and choosing insults for what seems to be the sole purpose of getting a rise out of someone. According to the Wikipedia definition, an internet troll is “a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, either accidentally or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.”
There is some new research on what would make a person choose that kind of role. Three Canadian psychologists (Buckels, Trapnell & Paulhus, 2014) looked at the troll-personality and found it associated with some deeply serious behavioral traits. Internet trolls, according to the authors quoted in Mother Jones, “feel sadistic glee at the distress of others,” adding that “sadists just want to have fun…and the Internet is their playground!” The study and surrounding discussion opens up an interesting window on human communication. In contexts outside of the anonymous comment sections, to what extent are people prone to using communication as a weapon for its own sake or as a tool to gain attention? This post takes a look at that, and adds some thoughts on the kinds of trolls that might lead you to trial, or appear in trial or pretrial research.
The Trolls of the “Dark Tetrad”
That sounds like it would be an excellent title for a science fiction fantasy book series, but it turns out that the “Dark Tetrad” is actually a psychology term referring to four personality traits predicting dangerous or otherwise antisocial behavior:
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- Machiavellianism: having a willingness to deceive others
- Narcissism: showing egotism or self-obsession
- Psychopathy: exhibiting a lack of remorse and empathy
- Sadism: taking pleasure in the suffering of others
The researchers (Buckels, Trapnell & Paulhus, 2014) conducted two online studies asking respondents to describe their own online commenting styles and to complete a series of personality measures. Both studies showed very strong correlations between trolling behavior and all four of the Dark Tetrad measures, particularly sadism. While other communication behaviors, like chatting or debating, were unrelated to these antisocial predictors, those who reported frequent and enjoyable trolling behaviors (around six percent of the sample) did turn out to score dramatically higher on the Dark Tetrad measures.
The study is covered in a recent Mother Jones article, “Internet Trolls Are Often Machiavellian Sadists,” which shares some of the data, as well as the survey questions that went into it. The results have some important implications for communication, showing that a relatively small but still substantial subset of people is motivated to sow discord and finds reinforcement in that act.
The Trolls of Legal Persuasion
So, do we see trolls in legal persuasion? Since they apparently number more than one in twenty, the answer is, “probably yes.” We shouldn’t be surprised to see them showing up in our mock trial sample, participating in oral voir dire, or even contributing to the the situations that lead to litigation in the first place.
The Email Troll
There is a tendency to feel anonymous when we’re in front of a computer screen. Sure, we understand that our names are connected to our words, but the lack of another person’s immediate presence can mute that understanding and lead to communication choices that wouldn’t occur in face-to-face interactions. For those on the extreme edge, that can include trollish behavior. Modern discovery has a love affair with email evidence for a good reason: not only is it conveniently preserved, but it also leads to some unguarded or hostile moments that can play a leading role as the “smoking gun” in a civil trial. Those participating in an exchange might know that the message would look bad in a courtroom, but think “It’s just Bob being Bob….” But a future jury is more likely to connect it to the company. “So here is what they really think,” jurors might think after seeing a key message or two. The best loss prevention practice is to avoid enabling trolls: Conduct and expect email communications that would pose no harm if read in open court.
The Research Troll
There are people who like combative communication, and it is predictable that those people would be drawn to situations where they can argue with others. For those trolls who aren’t afraid to get out from behind their computer screens, a mock trial would seem like an ideal venue: a chance to mix it up in an argument with strangers and walk away at the end. This is part of the reason why, in our own practices, we avoid databases and their “professional responder” pools that may include trolls. They can still show up, of course, in random recruiting, but they’ll often make themselves known in deliberations or even earlier. It can be a judgment call on whether you keep them or not. On the one hand, you can skew your results by sending someone home just for being disagreeable. On the other hand, one individual can end up playing a role that starts to suppress the useful content being provided by others. Our practice is to politely pay and dismiss someone who starts to show those signs.
The Voir Dire Troll
The open discussion settings of oral voir dire present another situation that might attract attention-seeking behavior from someone who just likes stirring the pot. Usually the formality of the situation and the judge will hold down those forms of participation, but occasionally an evident troll will break through. The person eager to disagree or to offer an inflammatory opinion may simply want off the jury, or may be just showing their own personality style. In either case, it is safe to assume that what you see in voir dire is what the jury will see in deliberations. For defendants, it can be a strategy to avoid striking someone who you think will disrupt a group and prevent consensus. But it is a dangerous strategy, because the troll isn’t giving their honest reaction but is, instead, arguing for the sheer fun of it. That kind of participation could end up working against either side.
The case of trolls may be another example of a disconnect between what the law expects and what psychology provides. The rational legal model would say that jurors use communication as a tool for arriving at the truth. But in reality, people have many different uses for communication. Some see it as a tool to bind us together, and those people would be prone to go along and seek agreement for its own sake. At the other end of the scale, others would seek disagreement, also for its own sake. Neither is what our adversary system would have in mind, and the latter can be particularly disruptive to its goals.
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Other Posts on Personality Styles:
- Pay Close Attention to the Big Mouths in Voir Dire
- Determine Whether Your Jurors Are Driven by Process or by Verdict
- Be Relatively Cautious With Absolutist Jurors
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Buckels, E. E., Trapnell, P. D., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Trolls just want to have fun. Personality and Individual Differences.
Photo Credit: SrNejo, Flickr Creative Commons