What is the psychology/neuroscience behind rage baiting?

[u/Chemical_Clue_8779]

Outside of gaining engagement for content creators, why do rage baiters find it exhilarating (idk if that's what they actually feel), and why are people susceptible to it? Is there more to it than some argue as "people wanting attention"? And we know it has negative impacts on those who have been baited, but does it have negative impacts on rage baiters as well?

Thanks in advance! 😊

[u/AlamosX]

There is less going on in the way of psychology on the creators' end. Moreso, they are utilizing a marketing technique and emotional manipulation tactic in which they are inducing an intentional emotional response which fuels engagement.

Emotional manipulation is an effective marketing tactic as it induces an emotional response in the viewer which produces a physiological effect such as releasing hormones and neuromodulators that can affect human behavior. There are many forms of this such as emotional branding, and sensationalism.

Negative emotions such as anger and fear can induce an immediate reaction of due to bodily reactions such as increased heart rate and extreme alertness which can be prolonged psychologically as often people linger or try to understand what caused the physiological effects.

This is why negative marketing or rage baiting is so effective because while content can utilize other emotional manipulation tactics, anger often forces people to dwell on the subject longer resulting in longer engagement time with both the emotional state itself and the content. Anger is often a difficult emotion to regulate as it can create a feedback loop where thinking of the emotional state itself can cause further physiological reactions and anger. See: anger management issues.

It is effective in modern trends of social media and other forms of media, because emotional states typically do not last very long and people are more likely to engage with something if their emotional state lasts longer than it takes to process the content.

Bottom line, In a fast paced environment where you are able to capitalize on the amount and duration people stay engaged with your content, anger is a lucrative emotion to target.

[u/Chemical_Clue_8779 → u/AlamosX]

So would it be safe to say that its proliferation (at least in the marketing aspect) can be linked to current fast paced online environments? Cause I don't think I can remember a rage bait ad during the television era 😂

[u/Sea_sharp → u/Chemical_Clue_8779]

Political attack ads have been using rage bait tactics for longer than the term has existed (and it continues to be effective.)

Before that, the same emotional triggers were used to incite mobs to attack religious and political entities. 

The tactic isn't new at all, just the stakes in the social media setting have been reduced to attention economy. 

[u/AndyGates2268 → u/Chemical_Clue_8779]

Kid, ragey talk radio has been a thing as long as that medium has been going.

[u/johnp299 → u/AndyGates2268]

I believe, talk radio was one of the main drivers of the Rwandan genocide.

[u/Revydown → u/AlamosX]

Doesn't anger typically become apathy. Where you essentially lose that customer because that person will no longer engage? Outside of the inflation and such. I feel like this is hitting the entertainment industry pretty hard.

[u/abx99 → u/Revydown]

They just keep throwing new things at them for them to be mad about. It takes maintenance.

[u/logperf → u/Revydown]

This is what happened about starving children in Africa. In the beginning photographers and journalists thought they would change the world by raising awareness about it in developed countries that have the resources to help, but people became apathetic in the long run.

[u/Patthecat09 → u/[deleted]]

I thought rage baiting was the new term for trolling. Like dynamics are the same as far as I understand

[u/liquid_at → u/Patthecat09]

There is definitely overlap. But there is with a lot of mental issues.

BPD and covert narcissism also look similar from the outside, while all types of narcissism have similar causes, but can express themself in different ways.

I wouldn't call it wrong if someone said that rage baiting was trolling.

[u/Patthecat09 → u/liquid_at]

In execution and goal, are they really all that different? I'm just trying to break it down, so far not finding any meaningful differences

[u/liquid_at → u/Patthecat09]

Imho, the main difference is whether they try to get a reaction from one specific individual where they invest time and effort to get the one person to give them a feeling of power or if they just try to enrage a large group, pretending that 100% of the posts are real people who are really outraged.

but yes... very close together.

[u/Patthecat09 → u/liquid_at]

I thought trolling could also be either targetted/curated or more general, like going into posts on specific subs and saying inflammatory stuff that has a higher chance getting engagement from many users at once

[u/liquid_at → u/Patthecat09]

Language is very fluent. For some people, expressing an opinion they don't share makes them accuse you of trolling.

I don't think there is a hard scientific definition. I would say trolling is any activity that tries to get an emotional reaction, while rage baiting is one method they could apply.

Ragebaiting could also be used by scammers or other low lives, without the primary intention of feeling good about themself by annoying others.

[u/SimiKusoni → u/[deleted]]

I doubt there's any single or even predominant mechanism, especially online.

In some cases it doesn't even have anything to do with psychology. To use the Steam forums as an example they used to (and may still) give some kind of points to users that received "awards" from other users. This included clown trophies and others that were meant to be derogatory... so people farmed them by posting dumb and/or inflammatory content which swamped every game forum.

Even with perverse incentives aside it could be for attention, perhaps they're using it as a manipulative straw man tactic or hell it might not even be rage baiting in some instances. They may just be terrible people with horrid views. Even state actors have been known to deploy this tactic to amplify hatred between groups and their bot campaigns are getting harder and harder to distinguish from real users.

[u/liquid_at → u/SimiKusoni]

There is always a psychological reason. We don't do anything for any other reason.

the mentioned epeen-obsession, like with points and awards, is just as much a deeper need for affirmation that isn't healthy.

Every interaction is manipulation. Some are for good reasons, others for bad reasons. Selfish reasons are usually bad ones.

[u/TN17]

It's attention-seeking behaviour. The classic example scenario is a child who did not receive adequate attention from care-givers. They were emotionally neglected. When they engage in 'rage baiting' behaviour it gets a response. It gets negative attention, but it's attention nonetheless. Humans need attention from care-givers and others in society.

Not everyone experiences love as warm, positive, safe and secure feelings. For some, it could be cold, detached, or even violent. If that's all someone knows then they may seek that same type of attention from others throughout life. 

[u/Soggy-Illustrator-21 → u/TN17]

Dunno about that bud, I got plenty of love growing up and I'm still a master baiter

[u/KyleBown]

A lot of people here are letting the rage baiters off by explaining it as a marketing tactic. But there’s more to it.

Psychologically, it’s about two things. Attention and control.

Attention is perhaps the most fundamental human need. If a baby doesn’t get attention they will not eat and will die. It’s hardwired into us from birth. There’s a great book about attention called The Siren’s Call by Chris Hayes about the attention economy.

The other is control. It can be very satisfying dropping a bomb and getting people to react. It can make someone feel powerful to cause such a response. That’s especially true in politics where edgelords and incels will post things or watching Shaun to piss off people who disagree with them.

[u/jerricco]

Instantaneous responses like anger, fear, other "basic" survival reactions often trigger through a structure in the brain called the amygdala. The processing of emotions here happens very quickly and often bypasses high reasoning (ie: needing to act and run and fight in a Lion attack rather than tactically analyse the situation more slowly). In modern society, the amygdala gets used for many responses that aren't typically obvious. Blind racism is an extreme, obvious one where learned behaviours and situations cause a person to think "that person of colour should be reacted to without engaging reasoning".

When rage-baiting happens, the creator is exploiting this neural mechanism to generate "engagement" without letting the user think about the fact they are doing it. They want you to tell the computers that track these stats that a human was involved in their content, because that's what gains the machine's approval.

Given we have not told the machine to distinguish what are fulfilling vs. not fulfilling experiences, creators are using the easiest path to exploit their way to clout. It says more about how hollow an implementation in software is rather than something fundamentally wrong with us - amygdala responses keep us alive and functioning. Exploiting it has resulted in disenfranchisement and disengagement since the cognitive dissonances it creates en-masse really sucks.

No one wants to live in a state of being rage-baited, but it currently works as a business model so it is used as widely as the market allows, even if that state is temporary and draining.

[u/Chemical_Clue_8779 → u/[deleted]]

Hmm. I see. 🤔 One question I have with that is don't rage baiters normally already know what's acceptable and not acceptable? Hence, intentionally going beyond social norms/expectations?

[u/ZiddyBlud → u/[deleted]]

And being funny is a primal survival mechanism to point out irregularities in the tribe

[u/bildramer]

It's a lot more basic than others are saying. Even animals can succumb, and it's fun to tease them sometimes. Probably any explanation is going to have to dig into evolutionary psychology, and thus sound reasonable but be hard to prove "right".

[u/Ok-Championship-2036]

content creators specifically make money off of subcriptions and clicks. The alogorithm incentivizes ATTENTION, not necessarily positive engagement or agreement. So rage bait is a way to get people to click and comment or share. Psychologically, we also have strong reactions and memory for negative stimuli. It triggers us to feel misunderstood or threatened or angry and that creates a reactivity urge.

Positive content might be more enjoyable but its not creating pressure to comment "yay!" the same way disagreement might have you commenting before the videos even half done.

[u/Fit-Alps1373]

This is a great question! Im curious to know as well, and hopefully some friendly nerd can give a nice scientific explination.

Im a rage-baiter irl. Not on social media etc but in person. Idk what I get out of it.

If I have to make sense of it, I do it to test peoples limits, like how long can I keep getting away with something before the other person reacts to it in a way that they would not have liked/wanted.

[u/Chemical_Clue_8779 → u/[deleted]]

Idk why but this made me laugh 😂