Summary: A new study examines the internet’s impact on human morality, highlighting how responses such as compassion and the urge to punish are skewed on the internet. The constant stream of extreme stimuli on the internet is leading to compassion fatigue, public shaming and virtue signaling.
These phenomena occur when empathy is overloaded and punishment is easily meted out in a free virtual environment. The authors advocate for research into better platform design and greater algorithm transparency.
Key facts:
- The internet causes compassion fatigue by overloading empathy with constant messages.
- Public shaming is rampant on the internet thanks to easy and free punishment mechanisms.
- The authors call for research into platform design to mitigate negative impacts.
Source: NYU
In the Review article, Claire Robertson and colleagues examine how human morality, which evolved in the context of small personal groups, operates on an Internet of more than five billion users.
Evolved human responses, such as compassion for victims and the urge to punish wrongdoers, work differently online, the authors say.
The Internet exposes users to a wealth of extremely morally relevant stimuli in the form of 24-hour news and intentionally inflammatory content from sometimes physically distant locations.
Exposing human brains to this new morally saturated environment caused compassion fatigue, public shaming, ineffective collective action, and virtue signaling, according to the authors.
Compassion fatigue arises because empathy is a costly cognitive resource that can be easily overwhelmed by demands for continuous information about suffering.
Public shaming arises because the Internet makes it very easy for large numbers of people to indulge the universal human desire to punish wrongdoers, an evolutionary adaptation to living in groups—but small groups.
Because publicizing a conviction is almost free, it becomes an attractive way to signal moral virtue and group membership.
Genuine help may in some cases be replaced by inexpensive forms of sympathy, such as “liking” or “sharing” a post, which do little but make people feel they have fulfilled their moral responsibility.
Moreover, the ease of organizing online leads to massive – but ephemeral – social movements with shallow roots and little power.
The authors call for research into platform design features that sustain attention or engagement without producing negative externalities on individuals and society, and for greater public access to platform algorithms to allow research to continue.
About these psychology and morality research reports
Author: Claire Robertson
Source: NYU
Contact: Claire Robertson – NYU
Picture: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Morality in the Anthropocene: The Perversion of Compassion and Punishment in an Online World” by Claire Robertson et al. PNAS Nexus
Abstract
Morality in the Anthropocene: The Perversion of Compassion and Punishment in an Online World
Although much of human morality evolved in small group environments, nearly 6 billion people use the Internet in modern times.
We argue that technological transformation has created an entirely new ecosystem that often does not match our evolved adaptations for social life.
We discuss how evolving responses to moral transgressions, such as compassion for victims of transgression and punishment of wrongdoers, disrupt two major features of the online context.
First, scale the internet exposes us to an unnaturally large amount of extreme moral content, causing compassion fatigue and increasing public shaming.
Second, physical and mental distance between moral actors online can lead to ineffective collective action and virtue signaling.
We discuss the practical implications of these discrepancies and suggest directions for future research on morality in the Internet era.