Persuasiveness is an important part in political communication. While some previous studies investigated the effect of elites' political incivility on a messages' persuasiveness, the effect of incivility from citizens on persuasiveness is less investigated. In the present study, I hypothesized that an uncivil political comment is less persuasive than a civil one. I also proposed hypotheses regarding moderating effects of political interest and the status of agreement with a message. To test the hypotheses, I conducted an online survey experiment using a Japanese sample. As a result, I did not find evidence that an uncivil political comment is less persuasive than a civil comment on average. Meanwhile, I found that those who had agreeing attitudes with the presented comment before treatment were more likely to be negatively influenced by incivility than those who did not.
Kohei Nishi (2025) studied this question.