3 ms·

I won't pretend to be familiar with the academic literature, but here is one paper I found: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/00221031679000

I won't pretend to be familiar with the academic literature, but here is one paper I found: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022103167900017 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002210... > The field situation consisted of a park-bench discussion of a topical social issue, arranged by a public-opinion interviewer. Prepared experimental variations were introduced by one of the discussion partners, a confederate of the interviewer. In the critical variation, the confederate insulted the subject during discussion. In other variations, he tried to persuade but did not insult, or else simply gave certain arguments without intent to persuade. Attitude-change results supported the hypothesis of negative change in the insult condition. Eleanor Gordon-Smith spent two years interviewing people who changed their minds, and suggests this: > The strategy is this: Ask where people’s beliefs come from as well as what they actually believe. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-difficult-secret-to-getting-people-to-change-their-minds-2019-10-22 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-difficult-secr...

jfengel 6y ago
Nifty that somebody at least tried! The paper has been cited only about 40 times in the half-century since it was written, but I found one recent interesting citation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Montagu_Principle_Incivility_Decreases_Politicians'_Public_Approval_Even_With_Their_Political_Base https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Monta... 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. That's from 2018 and specifically takes recent American politics into account. I'm skeptical of the study for a variety of reasons, mostly coming down to the issue of what people tell researchers vs what they actually do. But it's good to know that somebody is at least trying.

jfengel 6y ago

Nifty that somebody at least tried! The paper has been cited only about 40 times in the half-century since it was written, but I found one recent interesting citation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Montagu_Principle_Incivility_Decreases_Politicians'_Public_Approval_Even_With_Their_Political_Base https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Monta... 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. That's from 2018 and specifically takes recent American politics into account. I'm skeptical of the study for a variety of reasons, mostly coming down to the issue of what people tell researchers vs what they actually do. But it's good to know that somebody is at least trying.