Despite evidence that a majority of people in the United States say that they want more civil politics, candidates still use incivility strategically during campaigns. Distinguishing between descriptive and injunctive norms may help explain this apparent contradiction. This study presents an experiment conducted with participants recruited at 2020 Democratic Iowa Caucus rallies that tested whether (a) individuals differ in their descriptive and injunctive normative beliefs about a variety of uncivil behaviors and (b) candidate characteristics such as gender and insider/outsider status in a party influence respondents’ normative beliefs. Findings suggest that, while descriptive and injunctive norms align for some campaign behaviors, they do not for all behaviors, such as sharing false information and using insults. Additionally, men and women candidates, as well as political insider and outsider candidates, are expected to behave differently but are held to the same injunctively normative standard when uncivil behaviors are attributed to them. Future incivility researchers should continue investigating descriptive and injunctive norms to investigate whether voters dismiss descriptively common behaviors during campaigns, even if they perceive those behaviors as inappropriate and uncivil.

尽管有证据表明美国大多数人表示他们希望更多的民间政治，但候选人仍在竞选期间从战略上利用了不文明行为。区分描述性规范和禁令规范可能有助于解释这种明显的矛盾。这项研究提出了一项与2020年爱荷华州民主党核心集会招募的参与者进行的实验，测试了（a）个人对各种不文明行为的描述性和禁令性规范信念是否不同，以及（b）诸如性别和内幕/外人身份等候选人特征在政党中影响受访者的规范性信念。研究结果表明，尽管描述性和禁令性准则适用于某些竞选行为，但并非适用于所有行为，例如共享虚假信息和使用侮辱性行为。此外，男性和女性候选人以及政治内部和外部候选人在行为上都应有所不同，但如果将不文明的行为归因于他们，则必须遵循相同的禁令规范标准。未来的研究者应该继续研究描述性的和禁令规范调查选民是否活动期间解雇描述性的共同行为，即使他们认为这些行为为内容不当，不文明。