The “Need for Chaos” and Motivations to Share Hostile Political Rumors
Open accessAbstract
Why are some people motivated to circulate hostile political information? While prior studies have focused on partisan motivations, we demonstrate that some individuals circulate hostile rumors because they wish to unleash chaos to “burn down” the entire political order in the hope they gain status in the process. To understand this psychology, we theorize and measure a novel psychological state, the Need for Chaos, emerging in an interplay of social marginalization and status-oriented personalities. Across eight studies of individuals living in the United States, we show that this need is a strong predictor of motivations to share hostile political rumors, even after accounting for partisan motivations, and can help illuminate differences and commonalities in the frustrations of both historically privileged and marginalized groups. To stem the tide of hostility on social media, the present findings suggest that real-world policy solutions are needed to address social frustrations in the United States.
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Feelings of marginalization coupled with dominance orientation make people more likely to engage in hostility on social media.
“Studies suggest that feelings of marginalization coupled with dominance orientation make people more likely to engage in hostility on social media (Bor & Petersen 2022, Petersen et al. 2023)”
From Social Media and Morality. (2024) · cites this paper as Petersen et al. 2023
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The spread of true and false news online
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aap9559 · Cited by 8,847 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Unfortunately, this technological transformation has made it than before to spread what we call hostile political rumors in a way that goes “ farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than truth ” (Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral 2018, 1147).”
Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017) · Journal of Economic Perspectives · doi:10.1257/jep.31.2.211 · Cited by 6,767 · see citing works
Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.42.1.116 · Cited by 5,359 · see citing works
The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States
Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N., & Westwood, S. J. (2019) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034 · Cited by 3,317 · see citing works
Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online
Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2 · Cited by 1,155 · see citing works
The Partisan Brain: An Identity-Based Model of Political Belief
Van Bavel, J. J., & Pereira, A. (2018) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.004 · Cited by 743 · see citing works
Krizan, Z., & Johar, O. (2015) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/pspp0000013 · Cited by 234 · cited 3× · see citing works
“We build on research showing that status-oriented personality traits combined with social rejection can push people toward an escalation of aggressive motivations (Krizan and Johar 2015; Twenge and Campbell 2003).”
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Vaccari, C., & Chadwick, A. (2020) · Social Media + Society · doi:10.1177/2056305120903408 · Cited by 978 · see citing works
Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media.
Metzler, H., & Garcia, D. (2024) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/17456916231185057 · Cited by 204 · see citing works
Van Bavel, J. J., Robertson, C. E., del Rosario, K., Rasmussen, J., & Rathje, S. (2024) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-022123-110258 · Cited by 121 · see citing works
Understanding and Combating Misinformation Across 16 Countries on Six Continents
Arechar, A. A., Allen, J. N. L., Berinsky, A. J., Cole, R., Epstein, Z., Garimella, K., Gully, A., Lu, J. G., Ross, R. M., Stagnaro, M., et al. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/a9frz · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Perach, R., Joyner, L., Husbands, D., & Buchanan, T. (2023) · Social Media + Society · doi:10.1177/20563051231192032 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
- Authors
- PETERSEN, M. B., OSMUNDSEN, M., & ARCENEAUX, K.
- Affiliations
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- PETERSEN, MICHAEL BANG
- OSMUNDSEN, MATHIAS
- ARCENEAUX, KEVIN
- Venue
- American Political Science Review
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2023-02-17
- Volume
- 117
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1486-1505
- ISSN
- 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5943
- OpenAlex
- W4321253260
- Cited by
- 194
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 39 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 36 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 1 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 60.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Political Science Review (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Aarhus Universitet
- University of Cambridge
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-22-EXES-0014)
- Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond (AUFF-E-2016-9-22, CF18-1108)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- social marginalization, status orientation, political frustration, status seeking
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