Tag: Jeremy Frimer

Good manners really do ‘cost nothing and buy everything’, even in today's increasingly polarised politics. Whatever your political affiliations, it would seem difficult to deny that politics has become less civil over the last decade. Do these kinds of personal insults hinder a politician’s standing in the public? Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court a little more than a week later. According to the Montagu Principle, rudeness should only harm a politician’s ratings. As an alternative, the researchers proposed the “red meat hypothesis”, in which they liken a personal insult to “throwing red meat to your supporters”. The researchers found that the nastier Trump’s language was, the lower the participants' approval of him. Crucially – and this is the really important point – the Montagu principle held even among Trump's own supporters, while there was no evidence for the red meat hypothesis. To make sure that this was a general effect and not simply shaped by their existing expectations, Frimer and Skitka broadened their analysis to examine participants’ reactions to statements of fictitious politicians from across the political divide. Frimer and Skitka also performed textual analyses to measure civility in the transcripts of congressional debates between 1990 and 2015, and examined public approval of Congress over the same period.