How Moral Value Commitments Shape Responses to Political Civility and Incivility

Abstract

Citizen exposure to political incivility is increasing. Studies have found heterogeneous responses to incivility, but we know little about what drives this variation. This study investigates whether emotional responses to both civility and incivility are driven by moral value commitments. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory, we argue that incivility should pose more of a threat to people who embrace an individualizing system of moral regulation than a binding system. To test this, we conduct a 3 × 3 between-subjects survey-embedded vignette experiment with a representative sample of 1,789 U.S. respondents. The vignettes describe interactions between two candidates in a debate. The findings show that respondents clearly distinguish between civil, neutral, and uncivil debate and that these conditions yield distinct emotional responses. Moreover, we show “individualizers” have a stronger emotional response to incivility than “binders.” Responses to civility, however, appear to be unaffected by moral value commitments.

Tolerance of political intolerance: The impact of context and partisanship on public approval of politicians’ uncivil behavior

“…However, the findings from the two studies are inconclusive: whilst we did find some differences in line with our hypothesis in Study 1, those did not replicate. Moreover, we did not find much support that individualizing foundations matter when it comes to incivility judgments (Walter & Lipsitz, 2021), at least not in terms of public approval. A possible explanation is that, in contrast to previous work, we emphasized the context in our manipulations, which pitted moral beliefs about harm and group loyalty against each other.…”

“…Public opinion polls and research on political behavior suggest that uncivil and disrespectful behavior among politicians is on the rise in the context of U.S. politics (Frimer et al, 2023; Walter & Lipsitz, 2021). Politicians’ aggressive behavior in the public sphere violates the moral norms that regulate human relationships (Rai & Fiske, 2011), tends to be perceived as immoral (Mölders et al, 2017), and is often met with public disapproval (Frimer & Skitka, 2018, 2020; Gervais, 2015; Hopp, 2019; Masullo Chen & Lu, 2017; Stryker et al, 2016).…”

“…In addition to the social context in which political aggression may occur, we consider how individual differences in endorsement of individualizing and binding moral values (Graham et al, 2009) affect public responses. Some research finds that people who value not doing harm and fairness are more likely to condemn uncivil political behavior irrespective of the context in which it occurs (Walter & Lipsitz, 2021). However, given that political conflicts can be seen as serving or violating the group’s goals, we suspect that binding foundations, which include loyalty to the group (Graham et al, 2009), may moderate the strength of public approval.…”

Promoting Online Civility Through Platform Architecture

“…Waldron (2013) defined civility as the hard work of staying present in the discussion, even when facing deep-rooted disagreement. Civility has also been linked to politeness (Walter and Lipsitz 2021), but unlike mere politeness, civility entails explicitly affirming another's values or ideas, even those one finds disagreeable (Han, Brazeal, and Pennington 2018). There is a general consensus that civility is a necessary component to maintaining and promoting an effective democracy by respecting different views (Smith and Bressler 2013).…”

“…The first three foundations are closely connected to individuals' freedom and rights (i.e., individualizing foundations), while the other three bind individuals to a group or collective (i.e., binding foundations). Walter and Lipsitz (2021) suggests that those who hold individualizing foundations tend to have a stronger emotional response to uncivil discussion than those who hold binding foundations. The new liberty/oppression foundation is based on the resentment one feels towards domination, bullying, and oppression (Graham and Haidt 2012).…”