{"id":45980,"date":"2025-04-16T12:34:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T12:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buildersmovement.org\/?p=45980"},"modified":"2025-04-17T13:41:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T13:41:57","slug":"the-psychology-of-ragebait-and-polarization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buildersmovement.org\/2025\/04\/16\/the-psychology-of-ragebait-and-polarization\/","title":{"rendered":"When Outrage Goes Viral: What’s Ragebait and How to Spot It"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest blog post by Christian Beltran and Jared Celniker. Christian is a Social Psychology Ph.D. Student at UC Irvine, and Jared is a political psychologist and Research Director for the Humility in Inquiry Project<\/a> at ASU. Both are interested in reducing toxic political divides.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Does it feel like many people online are purposefully trying to make you angry? In some cases, they are. Content designed to outrage you is called \u201c<\/span>ragebait<\/span><\/a>,\u201d a cousin of \u201c<\/span>clickbait<\/span><\/a>.\u201d Ragebait seeks to provoke anger for <\/span>financial<\/span><\/a> or political gain \u2014 or even just to get attention for attention\u2019s sake.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In non-political contexts, ragebait can be relatively <\/span>harmless or silly<\/span><\/a>, like purposefully <\/span>putting on too much makeup<\/span><\/a> to rile people up. But there are much more harmful forms that involve offensive statements, deceiving imagery, and misleading information.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, a recent BBC investigation found that some users on X were <\/span>being paid thousands of dollars by the site<\/span><\/a> for sharing content, which included incorrect information, AI-generated images, and unfounded conspiracy theories. The content spanned the political spectrum: some of the accounts shared conservative-leaning views, and some shared liberal-leaning views. There can be a major financial incentive to get clicks \u2014 and <\/span>anger makes clicking and sharing more likely<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anger Isn\u2019t Necessarily the Problem<\/h3>\n

Outrage isn\u2019t always bad, of course. Anger emerges when people<\/span> feel thwarted from reaching their goals and want to take action<\/span><\/a> to change their circumstances. This desire to affect change can be a vital force in political and social movements. Righteous outrage helped fuel movements for civil rights, labor protections, and public health initiatives like the <\/span>campaign against smoking<\/span><\/a>. When we feel a moral violation has occurred, it\u2019s natural \u2014 and often important \u2014 to speak out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Given <\/span>outrage\u2019s success at garnering more social media attention<\/span><\/a>, inciting moral anger has become a primary tactic for both good-faith activists and bad-faith ragebaiters. Some might perceive outrage-inducing content as genuine activism, while others might view it as an attempt to garner online engagement for insincere, profit-driven (or division-driven) reasons. It can be difficult to objectively say what\u2019s ragebait and what isn\u2019t. One person\u2019s ragebait may be another person\u2019s morally righteous reporting. Your anger doesn\u2019t necessarily mean someone is unethically trying to manipulate you.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when you feel outraged, that can be a sign to think more about what angered you. Find out who created it and what their intentions might be. Is this creator someone who frequently posts outrage-inducing content? Does this seem like a video\/comment that\u2019s mainly trying to get a hostile reaction out of you, as opposed to educating you? <\/span><\/p>\n

When you think something online is aimed at unethically \u201crage farming,\u201d you can decide, “I’m not going to share this because I don’t want to unnecessarily add to our toxic divides.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ragebaiter Tactics<\/h3>\n

Many ragebaiters aim to provoke <\/span>moral outrage<\/span><\/i>, which is <\/span>distinct from standard forms of anger<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>drives people to punish and condemn wrongdoers<\/span><\/a>. Some ragebait will seem aimed at <\/span>increasing dehumanization<\/span><\/a> towards wrongdoers and political opponents as a group. Unethical ragebait can be seen as amplifying toxicity and conflict.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Potential ragebait tactics:<\/span><\/p>\n