Tweeting Others With Respect: Historicist Thinking Can Reduce Blame and Hostile Retaliation to Nasty Communications From Partisan Opponents

Abstract

Hostile partisan communication pervades social media. Partisan hostility often takes the form of reciprocal blaming, where one feels blamed by an out-party member (“She said my beliefs are stupid!”) and then reciprocates with blame-fueled verbal hostility. Here, we examine whether historicist narratives, story-like descriptions of how someone developed her beliefs, can reduce such hostile verbal retaliation. In three experiments, strongly liberal or strongly conservative participants were presented with “tweets” that criticized their views. They replied with a “tweet” of their own. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that historicist narratives regarding their criticizer reduced hostile verbal retaliation by both liberals and conservatives. Experiment 3 showed that an abstract historicist reminder—a general message about how life history shapes people—reduced hostile verbal retaliation by liberals. Across experiments, reductions in verbal retaliation were mediated by reduced blame of the criticizer.