

While the site originally operated without moderation or any policing, 4chan site operators had step in to block child pornography from being distributed on the site.Ī 2012 study from Marek Palasinski at the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom tested males observing a mock chatroom that they were led to believe was real. They have conspired to harass the parents of a teen who killed himself and to flood epilepsy message boards with images that flashed suddenly and included patterns intended to induce seizures.

4chan’s mostly anonymous users are known for trying to one-up each other, disgust and “troll” new users, and show that they have the lowest threshold for decency. 4chan is often considered the putrid basement of the Internet, serving as a hub of racist, sexist, homophobic, grotesque images and text. Such group behavior is alive and well on the web.
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Psychological scientist Patricia Ellison-Potter of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for example, has demonstrated in driving simulation experiments that people are more likely to drive aggressively when they are less visible (e.g., when driving in a car with tinted windows) than when they can be seen by other drivers (e.g., driving an open-top convertible). This phenomenon can also play out on crowded city streets and highways. Factors such as the crowd’s physical distance from the potential jumper (enabling their jeers to be heard but leaving faces impossible to identify) and the cover of darkness made the onlookers feel anonymous in ways that wouldn’t arise in different types of crowd settings.

Mann found one instance in which the crowd screamed obscenities and threw stones and debris at the rescue squad. Mann narrowed the reports to 21 instances that included crowds at the scene and found that in 10 of the cases, people encouraged the suicidal person to jump, and in three of the instances actually jeered when rescuers prevented the death. Mann studied newspapers from 1964 through 1979 to examine reports of apparent suicide attempts - specifically cases where someone threatened to jump off a tall building, bridge, or tower. In 1981, social psychologist Leon Mann demonstrated how being in a crowd can lead people to behave not only offensively, but violently. Overall, researchers have found that anonymity can reveal personality traits that face-to-face interactions may hide, but that it also allows strong group rules and values to guide individual behavior. Just like face-to-face gatherings in support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, the Internet has offered people a chance to self-disclose and offer support without showing their faces or giving out their real names.īehavioral studies on the role anonymity plays in online interactions have yielded mixed results. More recent studies, however, have identified the positive features of anonymity, including digital interactions that might be overlooked in the midst of the attention that “trolls” and hackers receive. Scientists have found a tendency for many people to act rudely, aggressively, or illegally when their faces and names are hidden. Zimbardo’s study was a formative piece of a rich body of research showing a link between anonymity and abusive behavior. The hooded participants were twice as likely to comply. He told the students to give an electric shock to a confederate. In 1969, APS Fellow Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University dressed female students in lab coats, some plain with identity-concealing hoods, and some with name tags and no hoods. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.Psychological Science in the Public Interest.Current Directions in Psychological Science.
