Taca (Irish: support, prop) is a public research demonstrator developed as part of an MSc Cyberpsychology dissertation at Atlantic Technological University (ATU) Donegal, 2025–2026.
Why do people behave more aggressively online than they do face-to-face? Decades of research point to anonymity, reduced social cues, and a breakdown in the regulatory function that physical co-presence normally provides.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett (2020) argues that the nervous system is partly regulated by other people — their responsiveness and presence help us manage arousal and emotion. Online environments remove this. Frustration that would be tempered by a face, a tone of voice, or a social cost can travel more directly toward hostile expression.
Taca is a Phase 2 demonstrator. It asks: can a brief AI-assisted venting interaction produce a measurable shift in intended online response behaviour? It does this by presenting two matched vignettes — one before and one after a short AI conversation — and comparing the responses.
The AI in the conversation screen is designed as a non-directive listener: it reflects, validates, and asks follow-up questions. It does not give advice, take sides, or amplify frustration. This is deliberate — the theoretical mechanism is co-regulation, not problem-solving.
Taca is Irish for "support" or "prop" — the structural element that holds something up. The name encodes the theoretical claim: that a responsive presence, even an artificial one, may partially restore the regulatory scaffold that online anonymity removes.
Todd McCaffrey is an MSc Cyberpsychology candidate at ATU Donegal and founder of FoxxeLabs Limited. He is also a published author with over 70 novels in print.