Understanding hostility in online political discussions: Individuals who are hostile online are equally likely to be hostile offline, motivated by status and seeking to challenge existing political hierarchies

Why so angry? Understanding hostility in online political discussions. Alexander Bor, Michael Bang Petersen. Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: Across Western democracies, online discussions about politics are considered uncivil, aggressive and hostile. Previous evolutionary research has explained this online political hostility as the result of the evolutionarily novel psychophysics of online environments: Lack of face-to-face interaction etc. down-regulate empathy and prompt hostility as a result of lack of emotion-regulation. On this explanation, online political hostility thus reflects an evolutionary mismatch. In contrast, we integrate (i) classical work on the adaptive functions of aggression and (ii) recent evidence on social media behavior to propose that online political hostility is deliberately employed as an instrumental strategy to further particular political agendas. We investigate this using a large representative sample of US citizens (N = 1500). Against the mismatch account, we find that individuals who are hostile online are equally likely to be hostile offline. Consistent with adaptive accounts of aggression, these individuals are motivated by status and seek to challenge existing political hierarchies. To this end, they invest more in online (vs. offline) political discussions as these discussions offer greater benefits (e.g., more interactions and greater reach) at lower costs. Thus, the hostility of online political discussions reflects a strategic investment in online discussions by aggressive prone individuals rather than an evolutionary mismatch.