4.1. Limitations and further research
antisocial social media behavior, humor
This study has some limitations: Firstly, since there is no instrument to measure immediate trolling motivation, we used an adapted version of the GAIT [Moreover, assessing immediate trolling behaviors (observable) rather than motivation (self-report measure) could prove more fruitful in future online trolling research, since answering a questionnaire may result in socially desirable responses [One limitation of this study is that we did not include a manipulation check for the social exclusion manipulation. We did not include a manipulation check to avoid making the purpose of the present study apparent to participants and because a meta-analysis of 120 studies found large (d > 1.4) and generalizable effects for the Cyberball manipulation [The present study only investigated malicious, serious trolling. However, another, humorous form of trolling behavior also exists [While our study has some limitations, it also provides some new avenues for further research. We suggest that future trolling research should consider criticisms of the Dark Tetrad [Concerning humor styles, an interesting finding of our study is the positive correlation between global trolling behavior and self-defeating humor. It appears that trolls (online or offline) do not only target others but also themselves, using humor. A direction to approach this further may be to include the role of self-esteem as a predictor of trolling behaviors. Moreover, the research on trolling might want to investigate antecedents of perceived funniness [Finally, we suggest moving beyond correlational studies when investigating trolling research specifically and antisocial social media behavior generally. Correlations between personality facets and trolling behavior do not explain why people choose to troll others 