The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis

Bor, Alexander; Petersen, Michael Bang

doi:10.1017/s0003055421000885

Cited by 51 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(72 reference statements)

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“…Another reason is that those who are most vocal on social media are likely the ones who most actively follow partisan news outlets, which often feature uncivil comments and exchanges (Levendusky 2013;Mutz 2016). Furthermore, the presence of hostile people on social media (e.g., trolls) could drive out those unwilling to tolerate incivility (Bor & Petersen 2020;Hmielowski et al 2014;Sydnor 2019), which, in turn, could make online discourse even more toxic. (While it may seem plausible that this sort of adverse selection effect is stronger online than offline, the evidence remains somewhat unclear (Bor & Petersen 2020)).…”

Section: Self-selection and Online Toxicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the presence of hostile people on social media (e.g., trolls) could drive out those unwilling to tolerate incivility (Bor & Petersen 2020;Hmielowski et al 2014;Sydnor 2019), which, in turn, could make online discourse even more toxic. (While it may seem plausible that this sort of adverse selection effect is stronger online than offline, the evidence remains somewhat unclear (Bor & Petersen 2020)). In short, we expect: Hypothesis 2a: Online commenters use more toxic language than the general public.…”

Section: Self-selection and Online Toxicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity

Kim

Guess

Nyhan

et al. 2021

Journal of Communication

121

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Though prior studies have analyzed the textual characteristics of online comments about politics, less is known about how selection into commenting behavior and exposure to other people’s comments changes the tone and content of political discourse. This article makes three contributions. First, we show that frequent commenters on Facebook are more likely to be interested in politics, to have more polarized opinions, and to use toxic language in comments in an elicitation task. Second, we find that people who comment on articles in the real world use more toxic language on average than the public as a whole; levels of toxicity in comments scraped from media outlet Facebook pages greatly exceed what is observed in comments we elicit on the same articles from a nationally representative sample. Finally, we demonstrate experimentally that exposure to toxic language in comments increases the toxicity of subsequent comments.

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Section: Self-selection and Online Toxicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Self-selection and Online Toxicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity

Kim

Guess

Nyhan

et al. 2021

Journal of Communication

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Some evidence suggests that this is the case. People preoccupied with achieving higher status appear to be responsible for most online political hostility (Bor & Petersen, 2022). Indeed, people who seek status specifically via dominance (but not those pursuing prestige) are particularly likely to engage in offensive forms of political expression; for example, they share hostile rumors and take part in political fights (Petersen, Osmundsen, & Bor, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dominant jerks: People infer dominance from the utterance of challenging and offensive statements

Araujo

Altay

Bor

et al. 2022

Soc. Psychol. Bull.

Self Cite

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Could there be upsides to rudely challenging people’s positions? If no one calls out the speaker of a challenging or offensive statement, it might be because the audience is afraid to challenge the speaker, thereby suggesting the speaker holds a dominant position. In two experiments (N = 635), participants read vignettes in which a speaker uttered a statement that was challenging (it directly clashed with the audience’s prior views) or unchallenging (it agreed with the audience’s prior views). We also manipulated whether the audience accepted or rejected the statement after it was uttered. In Experiment 1 the statements were about mundane topics, while in Experiment 2 the statements were offensive. In both experiments, speakers uttering challenging statements that the audience nonetheless accepted were deemed more dominant and more likely to be the boss of the audience members. This shows that people use audience reactions to challenging statements to infer dominance, and suggests that people might use the utterance of challenging statements to demonstrate their dominance.

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“…Although negative emotions like anger are central to affective polarization (Gidron, Adams, and Horne 2019), social norms tightly regulate their experience and expression (e.g., Bor and Petersen 2022;Johnson 2013). Therefore, it is normatively undesirable to appear angry even when experiencing this emotion.…”

Section: Outgroup-devaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

We Love, They Hate: How Radical Right Partisans Use Emotion Narratives to Consolidate Affective Polarization

Versteegen¹

2022

Preprint

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Western societies are affectively polarized. A burgeoning body of literature documents the causes and consequences of this tendency to love like-minded and hate opposing partisans. But what is the individual’s role in that? I argue that partisans are motivated to consolidate affective polarization to establish distinct and superior ingroups. Therefore, they use emotion narratives that a) ascribe normatively desirable emotions to the ingroup, b) ascribe normatively undesirable emotions to the outgroup, and c) maximize the contrast between both groups’ emotional experiences. I illustrate these strategies with a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with radical right voters, around whom affective polarization is particularly strong. The results show that partisans use a variety of emotion narratives to consolidate affective polarization. This paper emphasizes an individual’s role in affective polarization and closes by raising avenues for future investigations of this argument. Furthermore, its extensive documentation contributes to open science practices in qualitative research.

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The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis

Cited by 51 publications

References 54 publications

The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity

The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity

Dominant jerks: People infer dominance from the utterance of challenging and offensive statements

We Love, They Hate: How Radical Right Partisans Use Emotion Narratives to Consolidate Affective Polarization

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