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September 12, 2026Argumentation and Advocacy

Does (in)civility in debates matter? The effects of civility in the 2024 (vice-)presidential debates on polarization and democratic engagement

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Authors

GKGo‐Eun KimJPJihye ParkJLJong In Lim

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Overview

Survey experiment reveals that higher debate civility reduces affective polarization and enhances political efficacy in viewers, highlighting the democratic benefits of respectful discourse.

Key Points

  • Assess how variation in debate civility across the 2024 U.S. presidential and vice-presidential debates affected viewer polarization, cynicism, and political efficacy.
  • Conducted content analysis of the 2024 presidential (Trump–Harris) and vice-presidential (Vance–Walz) debates to quantify relative degrees of civility and incivility.
  • Administered pre- and post-debate survey experiments to evaluate changes in viewers' affective polarization, political cynicism, and internal and external political efficacy.
  • Content analysis demonstrated that the vice-presidential debate exhibited higher civility and lower incivility compared to the presidential debate.
  • Debate exposure generally produced positive civic outcomes, but viewing the more civil debate significantly decreased affective polarization by reducing out-group hostility.
  • Exposure to the more civil debate yielded a modest additional increase in viewers' external political efficacy relative to the less civil debate.

Cite This Study

Kim et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6aa51e9d327956e4761f868chttps://doi.org/10.1080/10511431.2026.2728317
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