Anyone can be turned into a troll

IMAGINE an internet troll and most people think of an angry sociopath hunched over their keyboard bashing out abusive rants to strangers.

But a study has found that trolls are perfectly ordinary people – and, under the right circumstances, almost anyone might become one.

Scientists at Stanford and Cornell universities in the US said people were triggered to become angry internet trolls through ‘ herd behaviour’ after seeing other personal attacks online, and if they were also in a bad mood.

The researchers recruited 667 people for the experiment, instructing them to read an online news article and leave a response. Under normal circumstances, people given an easy test to complete before the task and seeing neutral com- ments under the article showed they had troll-like tendencies in about a third of cases by posting personal attacks, swear words or unacceptable messages.

But this proportion almost doubled in a group of people given a difficult test to worsen their mood before being asked to comment, and who saw negative ‘trolling’ comments at the top of the article about Hillary Clinton.

Lead author Justin Cheng, a computer science researcher at Stanford, said: ‘We wanted to understand why trolling is so prevalent today.

‘While the common knowledge is that trolls are particularly sociopathic individuals that occasionally appear in con- versations, is it really just these people who are trolling others?’

The findings are attributed to ‘broken window’ theory, where one person breaking social rules makes others feel more comfortable following suit.

Around two in five internet users say they have fallen victim to trolling, while one in five comments on US news website CNN have to be taken down by moderators.

These trolls have traditionally been defined as those who ‘take pleasure in upsetting others’ and seen as sociopathic outsiders. But 68 per cent of people recruited at random online for the study were able to be converted into them.

Jure Leskovec, of Stanford, said: ‘It’s a spiral of negativity. Just one person waking up cranky can create a spark and ... these sparks can spiral out into cascades of bad behaviour.’