If you miss the old days of being nice to strangers, you’re not alone. According to a recent Pew Research survey, almost half of Americans report that rudeness is on the rise, and 34 percent say they often see people behaving rudely in public. Public behaviors that the survey defined as rude ranged from cursing or playing loud music to smoking, taking photos of people without permission, and bringing children into adult venues.
How many of these forms of rudeness have you witnessed? Chances are that you have seen at least some of them. But you would also undoubtedly agree that rudeness can take many forms besides violations of public norms. Maybe you asked a person in back of you in a checkout line to let you go back to the shelves to pick up something you forgot. To your surprise, the person yells, “No! Who do you think you are?” “Whoa,” you think to yourself. “What is happening?”
The Psychology of Rudeness
People who are generally rude may have the personality attribute of low agreeableness, meaning that they are hardwired to be mean. But rudeness could be a function of more situational factors. In a new study of “impoliteness” (i.e., rudeness), Lancaster (UK) University’s Jonathan Culpeper and colleagues (2025) propose that the “Principle of Impoliteness Reciprocity” (PIR) governs the giving and getting of rude behavior. There’s a “tit-for-tat” pattern when we interact with other people in which an insult provokes another insult and attack provokes counterattack.
However, there is also a tendency for “interactional chains to escalate.” Rarely do people back off once things start to derail. The purpose of the Lancaster U. study was to find out how these patterns play out, both online and in face-to-face interactions. The results can help inform the Pew survey’s findings by providing insight into how rudeness evolves in these two types of settings.
When Rudeness Breeds Rudeness
Believe it or not, rudeness online may not actually outstrip face-to-face (F2F) rudeness, according to Culpeper et al. You might think that anonymity shields the rude from the consequences of their online trolling. Before getting to the empirical test of this idea, it’s worth explaining why. The so-called “reciprocity credit-debit balance sheet” of rudeness that would ordinarily occur online is stopped because of the public nature of these interactions. When someone’s getting verbally abusive, either another user or a moderator is likely to intervene.
F2F interactions, by contrast, are also guided by norms, legal and otherwise. However, because you are communicating with another actual person, the balance sheet can easily start to get out of whack as “counter-debits” in the form of wanting to get even enter the equation. Credits of politeness are great, but not very gratifying. As the authors explain, “a responding act of impoliteness means not only that you have received a counter-debit but also that your attempt to exact a debit on the other person failed.” That’s when the urge to get even comes into play. Now the gloves come off.
In tests of the PIR model with both online (Reddit and Google Groups members) and simulated F2F interactions, the authors used network analyses to trace patterns of impoliteness across conversations. The authors invented an F2F scenario involving an altercation in a car park outside the main entrance of a shop:
A, accompanied by his wife, B, has parked in a space reserved for families. C raises the issue that they do not qualify to be there (and in fact blocks their car with his own). D is a parking official who eventually arrives.
The online interaction began as follows (edited here for reproducing on PT’s site):
“People who feel they are the Pope or Napoleon usually end up in a secure unit. What makes [people like this] so loony?” A response, again edited, was “And every now and then [X] returns to his idiotic, natural state. [expletive] you.”
The authors coded people’s contributions to this interaction as sarcasm, impolite or negative words, and resonance (copying the other person’s words). In both analyses, the authors took into account the actions of a third (or more) individual who might step in and try to mediate.
Relationships Essential Reads
You might conduct your own thought experiments as you ponder these situations. How do you think you would respond if someone unfairly took a parking spot? Or what if someone called you names online?
The findings supported the predictions that F2F and online impoliteness would show similar patterns across such interactions. What’s more, there was a tendency for slightly less rudeness to occur online due, in part, to the actions of those not involved in the original confrontation. One feature of online interactions was that they were more likely to involve sarcasm, in part because it takes time to come up with a snappy comeback; F2F situations occur in real time, so you don’t have time to concoct your witty takedown.
The most important difference, though, was that online impoliteness occurs in a huge all-at-once burst of fury, but in F2F situations, impoliteness escalated in a stepwise manner, with each step taking slightly longer than the one before. Eventually, things end in a “settling of scores,” or impoliteness match, with any semblance of politeness disappearing completely between the verbal combatants.
So, Are People Ruder Than Before?
This detailed analysis of exchanges in online vs. F2F settings generally supports the PIR model. People will be rude if others are rude to them, and to about a similar degree. But why are people rude in the first place? The Pew study suggests that the pandemic may have resulted in an erosion of social norms, but in fact, most people surveyed agreed on what constitutes rude behavior, suggesting that those norms still exist.
One possibility is that people really aren’t that much ruder than in the past, but that their rude behavior has become more visible under the public microscope. There have always been rude people, and there will always be rude people. This idea is supported by a 2014 study conducted by a University of Texas research team led by William Ickes. Its eventual conclusion was that, “these individuals are amoral (or immoral) hotheads who refuse to accept criticism or correction from others. They may also—though less reliably—be low in behavioral inhibition, high in behavioral activation, “blirtatious,” narcissistic, and/or Machiavellian.”
It might strike you that these are precisely the people likely to be the stars of reality television, documentaries, and stories of celebrities acting badly. How about politicians whose blow-by-blow coverage in press conferences and cable news feeds gets replayed over and over again? Maybe all of this social media hubbub reinforces the belief that rudeness is on the rise rather than reflecting the more likely possibility that rudeness equals clickbait.
To sum up, in your own life, you have the opportunity to set the PIR record straight the next time you suffer a real (or imagined) affront. Don’t be afraid to take that first step toward establishing a happier, and more fulfilling, balance of politeness.
