When internet users participate in public shaming and online vigilantism, their support for these digital punishments is frequently driven by schadenfreude and a desire to display moral superiority, according to a study published in Computers in Human Behavior.
Psychological Motives Behind Online Vigilantism
Criminologists Dosun Kim and Yeon Soo Kim from Dongguk University in Seoul designed a study involving 1,000 adults in South Korea to explore why individual users support internet justice. The researchers focused on subjective evaluations users make when watching or participating in online shaming, examining two specific psychological concepts: schadenfreude and moral grandstanding.
The term schadenfreude refers to the sense of joy or contentment an individual experiences upon observing someone else’s hardship or failure. Moral grandstanding is defined as the inclination to deploy moral rhetoric principally to elevate one’s own image or social standing. The investigators split moral grandstanding into prestige-seeking grandstanding, where someone wants recognition as a morally sensitive person, and dominance-seeking grandstanding, where someone asserts authority or shames those who disagree.
Behavioral Groups and Survey Findings
The researchers divided survey participants into three distinct categories based on their reported behavior. Non-participants had no experience with online vigilantism. Passive participants had viewed or searched for content criticizing rule-breakers. Active participants took direct action, such as sharing personal information, writing accusatory comments, or creating critical posts.
Members of the active group demonstrated notably greater degrees of schadenfreude, prestige-oriented grandstanding, and conviction in the usefulness of online vigilantism compared to the other two cohorts. Non-participants scored lowest on schadenfreude and perceived effectiveness, but scored slightly higher than passive participants on prestige-seeking grandstanding. Passive participants scored lower than both other groups on dominance-seeking grandstanding.
When researchers ran statistical evaluations within each category, they found that higher scores in schadenfreude and prestige-seeking grandstanding correlated with a stronger conviction that internet vigilantism works among both active and passive participants. For non-participants, schadenfreude remained linked to believing in the effectiveness of internet justice, but dominance-seeking grandstanding replaced prestige-seeking grandstanding as the associated moral grandstanding trait.
Methodological Limitations and Future Directions
The study relies on self-reported survey data gathered at a single point in time, meaning investigators cannot determine cause and effect. It remains possible that participating in online vigilantism increases a person’s feelings of schadenfreude rather than the reverse. Furthermore, participants may have adjusted answers to appear socially acceptable, and the measure of perceived effectiveness captures subjective opinions rather than actual deterrence.
Because the sample was restricted to adults in South Korea, the psychological patterns may vary across different cultural contexts or social media platforms. Subsequent research might implement experimental frameworks or monitor real online actions longitudinally to better understand the interplay between these mental traits and digital shaming.
