Increasing the sense of responsibility of internet users

Certain messages can drive internet users to take action in the face of cyberbullying, although the diffusion of responsibility on the internet works similarly to that in direct contact, say researchers from SWPS University.

Dr. Jakub Kuś, a psychologist of new technologies from the SWPS University Faculty of Psychology in Wrocław, and Agata Kocimska-Bortnowska, a doctoral candidate at SWPS University, published the results of their research in the article “Using the social influence technique as a tool to reduce the dispersion of responsibility on the Internet” in the journal Polish Psychological Bulletin.

Strength in numbers?

The phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility consists in the fact that the more people observe a critical event (e.g. a car accident or an assault), the smaller the chance that one of them will help the victim, because personal responsibility for taking action is “diffused” among all observers. This theory has been confirmed in many studies conducted in real conditions.

In the age of intensive development of the digital environment, researchers decided to investigate whether the problem of shifting responsibility away from oneself also exists on the internet, what contributes to this phenomenon and what can be done to minimize it.

The amount of time we spend online continues to grow. Along with everyday activities, negative phenomena related to cyberbullying, such as harassment, ridicule or hate speech, have also migrated there. Although many internet users often witness such events, they rarely decide to intervene, defend the victim or alert the administrators of the platform.

How to get internet users to react?

Dr. Jakub Kuś and Agata Kocimska-Bortnowska conducted a study to observe how users of a simulated social media platform would react to artificially induced crisis situations. They assumed that the diffusion of responsibility would be smaller if internet users were aware that they were the only witnesses to the crisis situation.

The second element of their research involved using a social influence technique, which consisted of adding a convincing phrase to the request for help sent by the “victim” of an online attack: “Every reaction will help.” The idea was to check when observers of a crisis situation would make a decision to help, and how to effectively encourage them to do so.

“The obtained results will allow to better understand the dynamics of the processes of diffusion of responsibility on the internet, and learn how to reduce it. This is all the more important given the large gap in knowledge on this subject, currently one of the most serious social problems related to cyberspace,” emphasizes Dr. Kuś.

The study with 168 participants was conducted online between April and June 2023. The participants were asked to test the functionality of a new social network prototype, which had been actually prepared by researchers. They were also encouraged to report strange and aggressive behavior and posts using a special button.

While browsing the portal, participants came across aggressive comments generated by a bot, posted on the profiles of other users. After reading the comment, for some of the participants, the attacked user’s profile displayed a request for help: “I can’t deal with this person, he keeps insulting me. I’m really asking you guys to help me, just click the Report button under his posts.”

In the second condition, participants saw the request for help, supplemented with an additional sentence at its end: “Every reaction will help,” which exemplified the use of the social influence technique (originally studied by Robert Cialdini and David Schroeder in the “every penny helps” variant in the context of collecting donations for a charity).

Additionally, some participants were shown information that the comments had also been noticed by other users (e.g. “viewed 42 times”), while others were led to understand that they were the only ones to notice the crisis situation. Each post also had an annotation with the number of views. However, the respondents did not know how many times other users had hit the “Report” button.

Every reaction will help

It turned out that the use of an appropriate social influence technique could convince users to react in a crisis situation. In addition, the study confirmed that the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility occurred on the internet in a similar way as in real life.

Respondents who believed that aggressive comments against another user were displayed by many other internet users reacted less often than those respondents who were presented with the information that the comments were displayed only once. This confirmed the theory of diffusion of responsibility, according to which the greater the number of observers of a crisis event, the less likely it is that any of them will take personal responsibility and take a specific action (e.g. provide help or support to the victim).

The study also confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed social influence technique, but, surprisingly, it was only effective when the comment was viewed once. When there were more views, the use of an additional phrase was not significant. The number of clicks on the “Report” button was virtually the same, regardless of whether or not this social influence technique was used. This result may suggest that the diffusion of responsibility prevails upon the “every reaction will help” technique, taking most of the responsibility off the participants.

“It is no great surprise to find that the internet is a very convenient space for antisocial behaviors. Our results help to understand why it is so easy for the internet trolls and haters to thrive. The anonymity-granting internet space allows the attacks to go virtually unpunished,” comments Dr. Kuś.

The authors plan to conduct additional research, but in their opinion, the results allow us to assume that certain social influence techniques can be an effective tool for reducing the diffusion of responsibility.