Is Negative Campaigning a Matter of Taste? Political Attacks, Incivility, and the Moderating Role of Individual Differences

We test how individual differences moderate the attitudinal effects of attack politics in two online experiments among US respondents, surveyed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 1,408 and N = 1,081). Study 1 tests the moderating effect of personality traits (Big Five, Dark Triad) on the effectiveness of character vs. policy attacks. Study 2 investigates the difference between civil and uncivil attacks and explores the moderating effect of Big Five, Dark Triad, tolerance to negativity and conflict avoidance. Results suggest that the effects of negativity and incivility are not uniform across all respondents. For instance, evaluations of the sponsor are more negative after exposure to negative messages for respondents high in conflict avoidance; respondents high in psychopathy are more likely to have a more negative opinion of the target after being exposed to character attacks, whereas incivility worsen the perception of the target for individuals low in conflict avoidance and agreeableness. Harsher campaigns, in other terms, work particularly well for some – and are particularly rejected by others. The implications of these trends are discussed.