The psychology of rude behavior online

Ah, finally a psychological explanation for the seemingly increasing trend of rude, obnoxious and down-right abusive behavior online.

Online communications reduces a person's sense of his or her own identity, thus providing the means for some to be rude and aggressive when they normally wouldn't be in person, according to research published Monday on New Scientist's blog.

Michael Marshall, the New Scientist's online moderator, decided to interview some psychologists about aggressive online behavior after noticing a sharp increase in the amount of abusive language on the magazine's Web site when it rolled out a new commenting feature for all articles.

Of the 800-plus comments last week, for example, while most were polite, "there's a stubborn minority that are rude, intentionally provocative or just plan abusive. It seems people will say things online that they would never say face-to-face."

Social psychologists have known for decades that if people reduce the sense of their own identity, they are less likely to stick to social norms, Marshall noted. For example, Leon Mann, director of the Centre for Research and Development Leadership at the University of Melbourne found in his research in the 1960s that people were more likely to bait a person standing on a ledge to jump if they were part of a large crowd, if the jumper was above the 7th floor and if it was dark. These factors allowed the people who were baiting the person to lose their own identity, according to Mann.

Nicholas Epley, a social psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Chicago, told New Scientist that the same phenomenon that happens with the jumper happens with online communication.

"Psychologically, we are 'distant' from the person we're talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we're more prone to aggressive behavior," according to the blog.

But, despite all the scientific theories, Marshall's himself seems the most plausible.

"My pet theory about why people behave so rudely is that online commenting is treated, by most people, like a pub conversation- they don't necessarily expect to be taken seriously and the social rules are fairly relaxed," Marshall wrote. "And yet, because comments appear in cold text without important cues like friendly body language, they can easily seem more offensive than if they would otherwise."