Two wrongs is what makes it more right: How retaliatory incivility receives social leniency
Merrick Osborne et al, 20206 JESP 104913
Incivility is largely denounced; yet our focus on its ills has inhibited our ability to determine how incivility is evaluated depending on when it occurs. We propose that retaliatory incivility – i.e., incivility in response to someone else’s incivility — is seen as less morally condemnable than instigatory incivility and consequently leads the retaliator to receive more social leniency than the instigator. We experimentally confirm our hypotheses in a sample of Reddit users, as well as four samples of participants from different contexts of group incivility: hockey fans, baseball fans, employees, workplace teams. Together, our findings illustrate that evaluations of incivility in response to another’s incivility (and directed at the instigator) are granted more social leniency than the instigator’s incivility. Thus, as incivility rises internationally, our findings have far-reaching theoretical and practical implications.