Studying and Measuring Civility: A Framework, Trends and Scale

Abstract

Four essential questions for the study of civility involve developing a definition of the term, determining its effects, establishing trends, and predicting the consequences of civility. A framework for studying it includes the actors, their gender, situations and settings, occupational role requirements, the cultural imperatives defining civility, and the processes through which it is learned. Objective measures of civility in the United States show its variability and change. Four items in the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS) are combined to form a scale of civility. Correlates of the scale show that civility does not differ by gender, color, or region. It is weakly associated with income but is significantly associated with education, occupation, and health. Age, education, and health provide a predictive model of civility. Anger, an emotional aspect of interpersonal exchange, reveals reactions characteristic of civil behavior: waiting for anger to pass before responding, trying to forget the incident, not thinking of revenge, not walking away from the situation, and not yelling or hitting. Hypotheses are proposed for further study that involves age, marital status, occupation, health, and emotional control.Study and analysis begin with formulating a framework, developing a system of classification, and measuring the phenomena. Social scientists have focused more upon dysfunctional behaviors than positive, functional ones. While civility has received little attention, a few studies have examined the related concepts of sympathy, altruism, mutual aid, and similar ideas (Kropotkin 1955;Sorokin 1950; Wispe 1958). Norbert Elias (1994) has addressed the evolution of manners and the process by which societies evolve toward civilization. Nonsociologists, such as Carter (1999) and Martin (1999), have excited interest by drawing attention to the variety of behaviors affected by and the social consequences of incivility in human exchange, in democratic deliberation, and in education. The civil rights and feminist movements have mandated equal and fair treatment for all, especially in the workplace. Out of these movements, sanctions for sexual harassment and other violations of human dignity have been established. These changes have expanded the weight of civility in human affairs.I previously have proposed a working definition of civility-consideration of others in interpersonal relationships-and identified possible functions of civility among professions, in the family, and at work (Ferriss 2000). Other studies have pointed to the morality underlying civility, its requirement of

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Historical Trends in Questioning Presidents, 1953‐2000

“…Accordingly, this change represents a slow “tectonic” shift in the culture of the White House press corps and its relationship to the office of the presidency. Indeed, the steady and virtually inexorable character of this change suggests that it may not be a journalistic trend per se, so much as one manifestation of broader cultural changes involving the decline of formality in American life and the coarsening of public discourse (Ferris 2002; Tannen 1998; see also Maynard 2003, 55). This is consistent with the initial observation that directness differs from the other three dimensions of aggressiveness in being least tied to journalistic norms, and most tied to highly general interactional practices.…”

Emotion suppression and mortality risk over a 12-year follow-up

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