Everyday Vigilantism

A new paper suggests that the tendency to punish perceived wrongdoers is motivated by communal narcissism and sadism

This is a brief post to highlight an interesting new paper I came across about a phenomenon called “everyday vigilantism.” Everyday vigilantism is the tendency to monitor one’s social environment for signs of wrongdoing, then to punish perceived wrongdoers. According to the paper’s authors - Fan Xuan Chen, Ekin Ok, and Karl Aquino - examples of everyday vigilantism include students who “humiliate classmates for violating their university’s COVID-19 rules by publishing their names on social media” and “[s]ocial media users [who] dox or harass others in online communities for committing various transgressions.” We’ve probably all encountered everyday vigilantes at one time or another.

What motivates their moral vigilance and propensity to punish? Everyday vigilantes themselves would probably insist that their motives are noble, and no doubt, they often are. Sometimes, however, vigilantes may have less-than-noble motives. That’s the possibility that this paper set out to explore.