Graduation Year

2020

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Reader 1

Professor Catalino

Reader 2

Professor Wood

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2020HannahDMcCarthyPotter

Abstract

The Internet offers an anonymous platform for the dissemination of news, videos, ideas, opinions, and most impactfully hate. The online community that this study will focus on is the involuntary celibate (incel) community. A community that bonds over their hatred, misogyny, and incitement of violence towards women (Smedt et al., 2019). Past studies have researched the impact of viewing violent media on aggression and violent attitudes (Johnson’s et al., 2002; Funk, Elliot, Urman, Flores, & Mock, 1999; Garaigordobil, 2014), and the prevalence of misogyny and acceptance of violence within a group (Farrell., et all, 2019;(Jaki et al., 2019; Smedt et al., 2019; Zuckerberg, 2019). However, there is no current research on the Incels.Co forum, specifically analyzing the impact of a feminist intervention. This study continues past empirical and theoretical findings to understand if online communities that increase aggression, attitudes towards violence, and misogyny can be mitigated by a feminist intervention. White men aged 18-55, who are members of the Incels.Co forum will be recruited to participate in the between groups experimental design. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental condition (a feminist intervention folded into a chatroom post about the pay gap between male and female athletes) or the control condition (a chatroom about what is the best refrigerator to buy). Participants will then complete questionnaires that measure their aggression, attitudes towards violence, and misogyny. It is predicted that those in the experimental condition will have significantly reduced scores on aggression, attitudes towards violence, and misogyny compared to the control condition. The research findings will have important implications on how to reduce violent attitudes and behaviors amongst members of radicalized online communities.

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