Many years ago, I wrote an article explaining why everyone on the internet appears to be an asshole—basically, mass anonymity and lack of face-to-face communication causes people to feel freer to act like jackasses because there are no social consequences.

But, it appears I might be wrong. An interesting new study was published a few weeks ago that challenges my assumptions with some fairly convincing data. The study says that people are not more hostile online than they are in person. We’re just exposed to far more assholes online than we are in person, therefore we incorrectly assume that the internet makes people mean.

One of the strongest human biases is called the "Negativity Bias," which is our tendency to mentally weigh negative events and feelings as being more significant than positive ones. It means that a single insult feels worse than 3-4 compliments combined. It means one failure hurts more than the satisfaction of a half dozen victories. It means one awful news story will upset you far more than five happy endings. The Negativity Bias sucks. But we must live with it.

The study basically says that our perception that people suck more on the internet is the result of our Negativity Bias. For example:

Let’s say that 1 out of 50 people are raging dickfaces.
Let’s also say that going about your day-to-day life, you only encounter about 10 people per day, on average.
That means that you only have to experience a raging dickface roughly once every five days, or roughly half a dozen times per month.
But online, you encounter hundreds, if not thousands, of people each day. Thus, you’re now you’re overflowing in dickfaces.
Due to our Negativity Bias, we naturally overlook the hundreds of positive or neutral interactions we experience while the occasional hostile person sticks out like a puss-filled pimple on the ass of our internet experience. Once encountered, it’s hard to ignore and/or forget what we’ve seen.
QED: After a few hours of internet usage, we lose all faith in humanity.