The Effects of (Un-)Fairness and (Im-)Politeness on the Evaluation of Argumentative Communication

The studies reported here were carried out in order to test whether people in everyday argumentative interactions evaluate contributions according to the fairness criterion of argumentational integrity. The hypotheses were (a) that violations ofthe fairness criterion are conspicuous, (b) that such violations are negatively evaluated, and (c) that in the case of specific violations (Standards 1 to 5), people distinguish between impolite and unfair utterances. Tb test these hypotheses, an incompletely crossed two-factorial design with the factors (un-)fairness and (im-)politeness (unfair/impolite, unfairlpolite, fair/impolite) was used, employing the scenario approach; its suitability was confirmed in the first (preliminary) study (N = 54). In the main study, all three hypotheses were largely confirmed (N = 119); the study also yielded information on additional factors influencing diagnosis and evaluation, such as type of unfairness or the participants'age and level of schooling.