Internet trolls are people lurking in cyberspace who launch attacks.

The internet is an incredible tool but like most tools it can be used as a weapon.

Don’t listen to trolls and for god sake don’t become one.

I think that what we really need to focus on is what the trends in research are showing

of why people are doing this, and that's the only way to really start addressing internet trolling.

So my name or title is Dr. Evita March, my research is in cyber psychology.

So in 2017, we were initially interested in the dark tetrad, and empathy, and gender predicting

trolling.

Now, the dark tetrad is made up of four traits:

So the first trait is narcissism, the second trait is sadism, the third traits is Machiavellianism

and the fourth trait is trait psychopathy.

And I should note that these are considered non clinical in that everyone has some level

of these traits.

We confirmed previous research that had found individuals with a high level of sadism and

psychopathy were more likely to perpetrate trolling.

We also found that, also confirming previous research, men were more likely than women

to perpetrate trolling.

When it came to empathy, we found some really interesting results.

Individuals more likely to troll actually had higher levels of cognitive empathy.

So cognitive empathy is a more analytical form of empathy, so it's the ability to predict,

and explain, and understand another person's emotions and experience.

It's not that they don't understand what they're saying, they actually really understand what

they're saying, and they're really good at predicting what they're going to say that

will hurt you.

We have a very unique leader. Whether you love him or hate him, our president goes on

twitter and trolls people.

I think he’s what you call trolling.

His goal was to troll the press.

Trump is the world’s biggest troll and everybody falls for it everyday.

Trolling has really become prevalent, I guess, in the media over the past five years. But

it does have a longer history of being researched.

Some of the initial definitions took the term from the fishing term trolling.

Basically putting a baited line out there and just seeing what you could drag in.

So it was a more lighthearted behavior, they were the trickster, I guess, of the internet.

Now it started, then, to take on a more insidious form, and we started to see it more aligned

with antisocial behaviors.

That motivation and desire to cause social mayhem and be motivated by atypical social rewards,

was an extremely strong predictor for internet trolling,

which suggested to us that personality

might only tell a part of the story.

Actually if somebody's really motivated by creating

that social mayhem, that might be one of the best predictors

for if they're going to engage in internet trolling.

The problem with rewards is that they're addictive. So the more I like feeling something,

the more I might engage in that behavior to feel it again.

And what we also know from addictions is that you have to continue increasing the level

of behavior to feel the same reward as you did before.

So the other thing to really start considering and addressing is that trolling could be an

addictive behavior.

And so another way of starting to manage and prevent the behavior is treating trolling

like an addiction, and treat it the same way we treat other addictive behaviors.

It's only through building that kind of profile of who the internet troll is,

is what is going to lead us into actually then saying, well,

if we know that the internet troll is X, then we know that X is usually treated with Y.

And that's really the only way that we'll be able to understand, manage, prevent behaviors.