Reality distortion field

How misplaced beliefs can destroy communities

Contentment problem

As mentioned in more detail here, contentment is an emotion that doesn't create a strong reaction. Therefore, content people don't often speak out or speak up. 

However, anger or fear can drive actions quickly. In any online community, if all things are equal, angry and dramatic people will stand out. People are profoundly more likely to use a system to complain than to use a system to appreciate others simply because appreciation doesn't compel us like frustration does. 

The distortion begins

To the inexperienced, this can create a reality distortion field. The reality distortion field exists when people within a community believe other people are discontent simply because a few discontent people have created posts telegraphing their discontentment. 

The confusing element is that the content people don't speak up nearly close to as easily, but one is much more likely to have 20 content people for each person that complains then most people realize. 

Why it affects community leaders more

Those who have the power to deal with issues in a community are more likely to be affected by the reality distortion field because their scope of work is more likely to surface problems. 

• Sometimes this affects leaders in that they think that their community is far more discontent than they are. 
• Sometimes this affects leaders in their understanding of human nature to think people are much more problematic than they really are. 

This perceptual trap causes leaders to see a community through a vocal minority than a silent majority.

As a leader, it's critical not to be surprised or afraid, or easily swayed by drama.

Social proof & Groupthink

In behavioral psychology, social proof is the concept that people are much more likely to do something if others are doing it. 

Social proof is a profoundly powerful mental shortcut that overrides critical thinking with heard behavior and it plays a critical role in online communities. 

Now whereas social proof is a shortcut to rely on other people's decisions for the sake of simplicity, groupthink happens when a fear of people drives consensus and overrides rational thinking. 

An example

When people post something negative about a community, if enough of a megaphone is granted to the small discontent minority in a community, it begins to create "social proof" of a false discontent consensus. 

In reality, most people are happy, but because of the contentment-silence problem, social proof begins to develop in the minds of people to the contrary. 

The social proof gives people an internal dilemma, a thought that they could be in jeopardy if they continue to agree with the seemly old community consensus. Combined with the fact that negativity is generally more evident, they are put in a position to decide based on distorted information. If they stay in their current position, they could be vulnerable. 

Overnight they switch and become a paragon of the opposite values of the ones they once held. Such people quickly begin to grasp at reasons that they are unhappy so they can fit into the consensus. Rather than being driven by rational thought to discontentment, they are driven by fear of the group toward finding a reason to be discontent. 

They are hopping on a bandwagon, for a sense of belonging, to hide in the safety of the crowd and to avoid it's wrath.

"Everyone believes this" is a common maxim of those affected. However, in reality, they've been duped by the fact that discontentment spreads faster, is louder, and is more noticeable than contentment.

Key takeaway: When enough people in a community see discontentment, they will want to conform to that discontentment, even when that discontentment is not based on reason.

The spiral

If people are given a megaphone for their discontentment then others will become discontent not due to anything but their perception that the group is becoming discontent. This creates a sudden spiral of discontentment where there was once contentment and is dangerous to the point of potentially destroying community.

Why do some communities spiral?

Communities of low standards are profoundly more likely to spiral because people of low self-esteem are more likely to engage in groupthink than people of high self-esteem. Their insecurities compel them toward consensus-driven thinking which can take the form of being a paragon of common virtues or ideals as they are not confident enough to be vulnerable by having their own divergent opinions.

Being different almost always opens one up to potential conflict and so insecure people cling to conformity and consensus. They are internally afraid to be vulnerable. Embodying a community identity gives them a sense of safety.

When the consensus becomes divided, these people feel extremely vulnerable. They feel as they could be in jeopardy as they don't know where the consensus really is.

This is why, like a sudden storm on a mostly sunny day, people with low self-esteem will quickly dart from blind praise to outrage -- they sense that the consensus they've been hiding behind might be in jeopardy and so they flip. 

Such people are easily swayed not by reason but fear of the group. They have become part of a mob, empowered by numbers made cohesive by fear and overriding rational thought through social proof. 

Just like anxious attachment leads to disaster in a relationship, such people never have a healthy attachment to community in the first place. 

The fight back

It's costly to fight back

During such a spiral, it's nearly impossible for those who enjoy the community to speak up sufficiently to quell this consensus, as those who do so are liable to be attacked and put themselves in a place of vulnerability for the community.

Limited reason

For those creating the trouble, they are fearfully clinging to the new in-group, and are unwilling to change their mind, because then they would have no group whatsoever.

Preventing the issue

Teaching people to think

When groupthink is present, the evidence for discontentment tends to be pretty flimsy or based on false assumptions or incomplete information. People with a critical eye and an understanding of the effects at hand can counter the false evidence being presented through dispassionate reason, if they are willing. 

Encouraging people to put in the effort, to actually study the facts at hand, and to come to conclusions not based on social cues, but reason is key. 

It's not often in a person's life where they see large-scale consensus by a group of people to the contrary of reason. The willingness to challenge established norms Is critical to rational progress. 

Warning people about the potency of these effects and encouraging people to study the evidence presented in such situations with a critical eye and to come to rational conclusions based on evidence will help those who are willing to put in the time. 

Curating thinkers

Strong community branding that attracts confident individuals and creates challenges that weed out people of low confidence are essential to the creation of a productive and functional community.

This undermines the base necessary for mobs to form, the base of irrational, reactive people who lack the self-esteem necessary to criticize socially-validated ideas. 

Choosing who gets the megaphone

Every community needs to have a system to ensure that normal anger and discontentment are given equal weight to words that create contentment. Assuming that discontentment is 20 times more likely than contentment to get posted and drive reactions, any community that wants to thrive in the long term needs to ensure that posts that create contentment get equal visibility. 

If the same megaphone is handed to people who are discontent as content, a community will quickly believe everybody in the community is discontent, simply because discontentment is profoundly louder than contentment. 

Independent statistics

To avoid getting sucked into a reality distortion field, taking individualized independent statistics regularly is essential. 

Palia Reddit

Reddit is a style of community that is profoundly likely to negatively spiral because of its psychological makeup. On Reddit, the algorithm is extremely biased toward consensus. So much so those who disagree with the consensus or challenge the consensus are often harassed. 

The Palia Reddit had a tremendous problem with negative posts dominating the entire subreddit. Complaints were king. Redditors found 90 ways to complain about a completely free game with some of the reasonable cosmetic microtransactions. By contrast Steam reviews showed that people very much enjoyed the game.

The disparity was caused by the fact that Reddit's vote system doesn't account for the fact that negativity is more likely to initiate an action, like an upvote, than positivity.

The solution

The moderators solved the problem by simply requiring posts about the same topic to be merged. By merging complaint topics or forcing new complaints to be posted as comments in old threads, they took away the megaphone from the complainers while still benefiting from reasonable feedback. 

They treated every post the same, whether positive or negative. If it had been said before, it had to be merged. It allowed people to have a space to share their thoughts, but it also required novelty in each post. This stopped the front page of the subreddit being dominated by the same negative posts being posted by the same people over and over again.