Study finds retaliatory incivility is judged less harshly than instigatory incivility

People view rudeness aimed back at the person who started a conflict as more deserving of respect than rudeness that initiated the conflict, though civil and neutral responses are still preferred. This research was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Incivility, which may involve insulting remarks, disrespectful treatment, and other rude behavior, is generally viewed as harmful because it can create conflict, disrupt coordination, and weaken relationships within groups. Researchers have devoted considerable attention to what causes incivility and how it affects its targets, witnesses, workplaces, and communities.

This work has also shown that incivility can spread; when one person behaves rudely, the target or a witness may respond similarly, creating an escalating cycle of disrespect. Most prior research has focused on the person who begins the cycle, leaving open the question of whether all instances of incivility are judged equally.

Merrick R. Osborne, a researcher at the University of Southern California, and colleagues examined whether people distinguish between instigatory incivility, which introduces rudeness into an interaction, and retaliatory incivility, which is directed at the person who behaved rudely first.

Drawing on theories suggesting that the moral meaning of an action depends on its social context, the researchers proposed that retaliation might be viewed as more justified or virtuous because it can appear to confront wrongdoing, defend another group member, or reinforce expectations about how people should be treated. They predicted that this perceived virtuousness would lead observers to grant retaliators greater social leniency and status than instigators.

The researchers conducted five preregistered experiments with a combined final sample of 848 participants. Study 1 involved 135 Reddit users recruited through Prolific Academic. Participants identified a subreddit that was important to them and named two frequent contributors, whose pseudonyms were incorporated into a hypothetical exchange. Depending on the condition, one contributor either made an ordinary post followed by an uncivil response or first posted something rude and then received an equally rude response.

Study 2 recruited hockey and baseball fans through Prolific, retaining 141 hockey fans and 147 baseball fans. Participants imagined a player from their preferred team either starting a physical confrontation or retaliating after an opposing player had committed a comparable offense. Study 3 included 185 Prolific participants who worked full-time or part-time. They recalled or imagined a workplace situation in which a coworker initiated incivility, retaliated against the instigator, or redirected the incivility toward an uninvolved third person.

For Study 4, 240 participants were recruited through CloudResearch. Participants imagined working at a fictional company and read an email exchange in which one employee made either a civil or uncivil comment about a colleague’s report. A second employee then responded civilly, remained neutral, or responded uncivilly. Participants evaluated both employees, allowing the researchers to compare retaliation with instigation, silence, and a polite response.

Across the studies, participants completed an eight-item virtuousness measure assessing whether the behavior appeared right, fair, honorable, virtuous, morally correct, and justified, as well as a status-conferral scale assessing admiration and regard for the actor. The researchers also used context-specific measures of social rewards, including Reddit upvotes, willingness to purchase a player’s jersey or vote for sports honors, recommendations for workplace promotions, and willingness to spend time with a coworker.

Study 3 also included the 10-item negative-affect portion of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule as a control measure. Most ratings in the first three studies used seven-point scales, whereas Study 4 used scales ranging from negative to positive evaluations so that the researchers could determine whether retaliators were genuinely admired or merely disliked less.

Across the Reddit and sports experiments, participants consistently judged retaliatory incivility more favorably than instigatory incivility. Reddit users granted greater status to someone who posted a rude response to an initially rude contributor and were approximately seven times more likely to upvote that response than an equally rude comment that was not retaliatory. Hockey and baseball fans similarly viewed retaliating players as worthier of status and team-related rewards than players who initiated the confrontation.

This pattern emerged even though the retaliation could disadvantage the participant’s preferred team, harm an opposing player who had not personally committed the original offense, or occur in sporting contexts where aggressive conduct might sometimes be interpreted as helping one’s team. Across these studies, retaliators were also perceived as more virtuous, and this difference helped explain why they received greater social leniency.

The workplace studies further showed that the effect depended on whom the incivility targeted. Participants granted greater status and job-related rewards to a coworker who directed incivility back at the original instigator than to someone who initiated incivility or spread it to an uninvolved colleague. Instigatory and redirected incivility were evaluated similarly, suggesting that observers were not simply more forgiving of whoever acted second.

Study 4 clarified, however, that greater leniency did not amount to approval. Retaliators were judged less negatively than instigators and received more favorable evaluations when their rude response followed another person’s rudeness rather than a civil comment. Nevertheless, they were still rated as more immoral and less worthy of respect than the scale midpoint. Civil responses were evaluated most positively, while neutral responses were also generally preferable to rude retaliation. Thus, retaliatory incivility was not rewarded in an absolute sense; it was primarily punished less severely than incivility that started the conflict.

The authors note that their virtuousness measure, although highly internally consistent, had not undergone formal statistical validation. The studies were also limited to the United States, and the sports experiments examined only men’s hockey and baseball, leaving questions about whether the results generalize across cultures, genders, and marginalized groups.

Overall, these findings show that people interpret rudeness in light of what came before it, granting some moral and social leniency to retaliation while continuing to regard civility as the more appropriate response.

The research, “Two wrongs is what makes it more right: How retaliatory incivility receives social leniency,” was authored by Merrick R. Osborne, Suhaib Abdurahman, Ali Omrani, Jackson P. Trager, and Morteza Dehghani.