The Montagu Principle

Incivility decreases politicians’ public approval, even with their political base

Bibliographic Data

ID6200315
AuthorsJeremy A Frimer (0000-0003-4811-0199, University of Winnipeg), Linda J Skitka, Linda Skitka (0000-0002-7078-0650, University of Illinois Chicago)
Year2018
Volume115
Issue5
Pages845-866
Publication date2018-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037/pspi0000140
PMID30124301
OpenAlexW2888160087
LanguageEN
Citations received48
References cited29

M. W. Montagu asserted that, "civility costs nothing and buys everything." In the realm of social judgment, the notion that people generally evaluate civil people more favorably than uncivil people may be unsurprising. However, the Montagu Principle may not apply in a hyper-partisan political environment in which politicians "throw red meat to their base" by unleashing uncivil, personal attacks against their opponents, satisfying the aggressive desires of their most hyper-partisan supporters, and thus potentially redoubling their approval among them. We conducted 2 longitudinal/observational studies of U.S. Congress and President Trump, and 4 experiments (N = 4,837) involving real exchanges between President Trump and his adversaries and a speech by a fictitious politician. Civility helped or did not affect-but never harmed-the reputation of the speaker, supporting the Montagu Principle. Even self-identified "diehard supporters" of President Trump, for example, evaluated the president more favorably after he responded with civility to a personal attack. Uncivil remarks uniquely diminished the speaker's reputation, and had little impact on the reputation of the targets of the attack, the perceived winner of the verbal exchange, the reputation of the speaker's party, or the sense that the country is moving in the right direction. Incivility made the speaker seem less warm and did less to affect perceptions of dominance or honesty. This warmth deficit explained the reputational costs of incivility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Civility · Embarrassment · Incivility · Political science · Politics · Reputation · Sociology · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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