Internet trolling, or purposely inflicting a small amount of pain on another individual over the internet, has arguably become a normal behavior among most internet users. But what about the truest kind of trolls, who spend hours upon hours creating discord in forums and comment sections? Psychologists have some new research that suggests that links internet trolling with a "Dark Tetrad" of personality features that includes narcissism, Machiavellanism, psychopathy, and sadism.

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"Sometimes the best response is just no response at all. And never try to stoop to their level by flaming or trolling or back," was Video Game designer Mike Drach's advice on how to win against internet trolls as reported by Kotaku. If there's any community that has the worst kind of internet trolls it would definitely be gamer culture. This advice supports results from a newly published study entitled "Trolls just want to have fun" because if the troll in question is just a sadist in disguise, the only defense is to indeed ignore them.

Psychology Today reports that, "In this month's issue of Personality and Individual Differences, a study was published that confirms what we all suspected: internet trolls are horrible people." They go on to explain that this confirmation in question was found using two internet studies with over 1,200 participants. The researchers gave personality tests to each participant along with a survey about their internet activities.

Ultimately the study found that those who admitted that trolling was their favorite internet activity, scored high on "Dark Tetrad" indicators for narcissism, Machiavellanism, psychopathy, and sadism. In fact, researchers found that the "associations between sadism and trolling were particularly strong" which ultimately implies that internet trolls are mostly trolling to get a rise out of innocent bystanders.

While concerns about internet trolling have increased over the past few years due to harrowing tales of cyber-bullying, this study suggests that trolls are a small portion of internet culture that purposely seek to harm as opposed to a more alarming thought that society has become a group of trolls.