The Power—and Pitfalls—of Incivility

"Skinhead lesbian." Emma González was publicly branded as such by Maine legislative candidate Leslie Gibson less than a month after the teenage gun control activist survived the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Her schoolmate David Hogg was dubbed a "moron" and "bald-faced liar" by the Republican hopeful. The comments thrust Gibson—who had been running unopposed in a district of 10,000 residents—into the national spotlight. His words echoed from the local Sun Journal to The New York Times, and within days, he had two challengers. A sleepy state-level shoo-in was now a brisk contest and Gibson's crass insults provided the catalyst.

Democracy isn't always pretty, but most Americans say they expect their leaders—from elected officials to the heads of protest movements—to engage in civil discourse. A 2016 survey by Allegheny College found that 80 percent of respondents consider civility vitally important for democracy. But in a 2017 survey, 70 percent of Americans agreed that discourse has gotten markedly less civil since the election of Donald Trump.

Incivility has many downsides—it arouses fear and anger and may ultimately erode trust in government—but a little rudeness may be absolutely necessary for a functioning democracy. Researchers find that it not only stimulates our thought processes, it also moves us to take action.

Who You Calling Uncivil?

Incivility is hard to define, especially because what's unspeakably rude to one person might be normal banter to another. But incivility in the political sphere is defined as discourse that would violate social norms if it occurred in a nonpolitical context. Gratuitously insulting or inflammatory remarks—calling a teenage shooting victim a "moron"—qualify as uncivil by just about anyone's standard. Body language that conveys disrespect, like New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon's frequent eye rolls during a debate with incumbent Andrew Cuomo, is also norm busting. Interrupting someone in an angry tone—a standard feature of almost any political show on TV—registers in our brains as a sign of rudeness.

Rudeness gets under our skin, even when we're not the target. "People don't like seeing others treated poorly," says Christine Porath, who studies workplace incivility at Georgetown University. Her research has found that uninvolved witnesses of incivility report emotional responses of fear and anger comparable to those experienced by direct targets.

Incivility in the political realm is no less potent in stirring up anger and anxiety. And it spreads: People who witness politicians behaving rudely, and particularly those who feel angry as a result, are more likely to speak coarsely in their own political conversations, research by the University of Texas's Bryan Gervais and others has shown. "Incivility is like a virus," Porath says.

Even polite politicians get infected. Viewing rude interactions between political elites lowers trust in government as a whole, according to research by Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania. Only a few politicians behaving badly give all of them a bad name. "It's easy to look at the collective and think it's terrible," she says: "'They can't get anything done.'"

Your own representatives, however, may be exempt. "Everybody loves their congressperson, but hates Congress," Mutz observes. "There's always been a huge gap between how we think about individual politicians and how we think about politicians as a group." Gallup polls have consistently found that approval ratings for specific congresspeople run 30 or 40 points higher than the body's overall approval. While most Americans prefer their politics without rudeness, a small percentage, evidence suggests, like it. They may be the Trump supporters who often praise him for his dearth of "political correctness." It may be that incivility has the potential to boost the profile of certain individuals.

The Power of Arousal

Our brains evolved to associate conflict with violence; the anger or anxiety stirred up at a political sparring match is the fight-or-flight response focusing our attention on a potential source of danger. "Physiological arousal goes way up when we're watching an intense conflict," Mutz says, and "arousal is strongly correlated with attention."

Attention is a finite resource, and average Americans—working, caring for kids, and going about daily life—don't devote much of their limited supply to politics. Unpleasant as it is, incivility pierces the attentional barrier. "It breaks through the clutter of the banal political talk you normally hear," says political scientist Susan Herbst, president of the University of Connecticut, who researches tactical uses of incivility. Political figures need attention to get elected, enact policy, and generate support, she adds. Some nonviolent incivility, used strategically, may be "necessary to bring people into the public sphere."

The Parkland teens have been frequent victims of incivility, but they've also successfully wielded it to inject new life into a gridlocked gun debate. When survivor Sarah Chadwick wanted to call attention to her senator's close relationships with gun rights groups, for instance, she tweeted, "We should change the name of AR-15s to 'Marco Rubio' because they are so easy to buy."

Conservatives were quick to chide her as uncivil. But her quip was retweeted more than 77,000 times, and seven days later, Rubio—who had received more than $3 million in pro-gun campaign funds and an "A+" rating from the NRA—introduced legislation for strengthened background checks and other gun control measures promoted by the Parkland survivors. It's impossible to determine whether Chadwick's barb directly influenced Rubio's behavior, but it helped secure the teens a seat at the table. "When folks believe the system is stacked against them, incivility can be a tool to even up power dynamics," Gervais says.

Incivility as Action

Once we're paying attention, we're primed to jump in. After witnessing an uncivil debate, viewers were three times more likely to share their own opinions than those who watched a calm interaction, finds Emily Sydnor of Southwestern University. Such involvement can be especially important for problems that voters don't consider inherently engaging but that nevertheless demand discussion, Herbst says. "A lot of the social and political issues of our time are pretty complex," she notes. "Incivility can have a clarifying effect."

Democracy demands more than eyeballs and opinions. But just as it drew new candidates into Gibson's one-man show in Maine, incivility may also have the power to move citizens to the ballot box. (In Gibson's case, his incivility so enlivened the field that he dropped out altogether.) People exposed to incivility are more likely to say they plan to vote in an upcoming election than those who witness civil exchanges, according to a 2007 study by Vanderbilt University's John Geer and Dartmouth's Deborah Brooks.

"Hand wringing" about incivility often fails to account for its power, Herbst says, and may be ahistorical to boot. "The founders never thought that democracy was for the faint of heart," she says. "They thought it was going to be tough and rollicking." While there's value in debating where the line should be drawn, she adds, "There's a price to pay for getting tied up in knots about how things are said."