Tag: Susan Herbst

Exposure to incivility can reduce trust in government, belief in institutional legitimacy and media credibility while further polarizing citizens politically. My own work finds that when people are exposed to political incivility, they’re likely to respond in kind. Some watched a 45-second news clip that was civil, while others saw a clip in which opponents interrupted and insulted one another. Eight percent of participants who watched the civil clip used some form of incivility in their comment — insulting the speakers’ views and calling them names. I found that as well. The participants in my experiment who watched incivility were a little ruder in their responses — but also much more likely to offer opinions about the topic discussed in the clip than those who watched a more civil clip, by 33 percent to 11 percent. On Twitter, people were quick to argue that the White House and the Republican Party are supporting a double standard. As political scientist Bryan Gervais showed, people exposed to incivility from the other party were angrier and more likely to respond with similar incivility. We then asked participants about a variety of attitudes, including whether the comments struck them as uncivil. By contrast, civil nonviolent protest has at times been labeled “uncivil” to diminish it.