Who Are the Internet’s “Toxic People”? A Study of Nearly 57,000 Comments Offers a Surprise

Aggressive comments online may look like evidence of a “toxic” personality, but a study of nearly 57,000 Reddit comments points to a less straightforward conclusion. The personality traits researchers measured did not predict how toxic participants’ messages were in real life.

Published in Computers in Human Behavior, the research compared psychological assessments with participants’ actual Reddit activity. The study involved 114 people in the United States. They completed questionnaires about personality, social-media behavior and involvement in online conflicts, after which researchers analyzed their Reddit posts with the participants’ consent.

The researchers examined 56,892 comments, comprising more than 152,000 sentences. They assessed the toxicity of the messages and also analyzed expressed emotions, irony and other features of the language. The results showed no significant associations between the participants’ self-reported “dark” traits and estimates of those traits generated through automated text analysis. Questionnaire-based personality measures also failed to predict the toxicity of the comments posted on Reddit.

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I think it is important, first of all, not to confuse toxic behavior with a particular personality structure. We tend to label people very quickly when we see someone insulting, provoking or reacting aggressively online and assume that such behavior must reflect narcissism, psychopathy or other personality traits. In reality, a person can have a hostile reaction without us necessarily talking about pathology or very pronounced traits in this area.

Dan Adrian Irimia, a psychologist and alternative-education specialist, cautioned against treating hostile behavior as proof of narcissism, psychopathy or another pronounced personality trait. “I think it is important, first of all, not to confuse toxic behavior with a particular personality structure,” he said. “A person can have a hostile reaction without us necessarily talking about pathology or very pronounced traits in this area.”

Irimia said context can make anyone more reactive when they feel attacked, wronged or invalidated. Even people without such traits may feel a strong need to prove they are right, defend their view or have the last word. “Therefore, an aggressive comment does not automatically tell us who that person is in the entirety of their personality,” he said.

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Even people who do not display such personality traits may have a very strong need to prove they are right, defend their point of view or have the last word. Therefore, an aggressive comment does not automatically tell us who that person is in the entirety of their personality.