Incivility is a Bad Political Strategy if You Want a Following

It seems politicians—even on the same side of the aisle—compete at being the most offensive and rude. But why? Sure, incivility gets you headlines. The media obsesses over the swirling feuds and scandals of government. But does all that translate into a political following, or just plain infamy?

My co-author and I wanted to know whether incivility increased a politician's following—if people wanted to hear more of what uncivil politicians had to say. We started by collecting thousands of Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's tweets and running them through an artificial intelligence program (https://perspectiveapi.com) that provided an "incivility score" for each tweet. We compared how each politician's scores for a given day corresponded with the number of Twitter followers gained the next day. If incivility increased interest in what a politician had to say, then days when Trump or Biden were particularly uncivil should translate into increased followership the following day.

Incivility Meant Fewer Followers

Incivility predicted a smaller number of added followers, while civility predicted a higher number.

To explore this real-life finding further, we conducted a number of controlled studies. In one, we presented participants with tweets by members of Congress, with each Congress person's name and Twitter handle presented along with the tweet. Some participants read uncivil tweets that these politicians had actually written. For example, "How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?" (written by Matt Gaetz on May 4, 2022). Other participants read modified versions of these same tweets, where we made them more civil. Also, some participants read tweets by Republican politicians, while others read tweets by Democrat politicians.

Once again, incivility decreased interest; participants who read the uncivil messages reported less interest in hearing more from the politicians than participants who read the civil ones.  What's more, this was the case regardless of whether there was a match or a mismatch between the participant's own political party and the politician's political party. That means Democrat participants were just as turned off by the uncivil Democrat politicians as they were by the uncivil Republican politicians, and Republican participants were just as turned off by the uncivil Republican politicians as they were by the uncivil Democrat politicians.  

In another study, some participants read a fictitious speech chock-full of name-calling and disrespect for the other side. Others heard a civil version of this same speech. The results were enlightening: Uncivil speech was seen as both more attention-grabbing and more morally distasteful, and the speech's attention-grabbing nature did predict greater interest in the politician, but this was undone by the negative impact of people finding the uncivil speech immoral. Incivility caused people's ears to perk up, but its immorality was too off-putting, and in the end, they felt less interest.

So, here is a lesson for politicians: Incivility is not a good strategy for advancing your political career. People find your incivility morally distasteful and do not want to hear more from you, even if you catch their attention. I am not sure why many politicians have turned to incivility these days, but I hope our results might inspire them to do otherwise.

For Further Reading

Feinberg, M., & Frimer, J. A. (2022). Incivility diminishes interest in what politicians have to say. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221136182

Frimer, J. A., Aujla, H., Feinberg, M., Skitka, L. J., Aquino, K., Eichstaedt, J. C., & Willer, R. (2023). Incivility is rising among American politicians on Twitter. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 14(2), 259-269. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221083811

Frimer, J. A., & Skitka, L. J. (2018). The Montagu Principle: Incivility decreases politicians' public approval, even with their political base. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(5), 845-866. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/pspi0000140

Matthew Feinberg is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He explores the processes that unite people together to form cohesive and productive groups.