Rational Strategy or Personality? Explaining Political Incivility among Elites

Politicians increasingly resort to uncivil communication – when they mock and insult one another – raising concerns about the quality of democratic discourse. While much research interprets such elite communication as a product of rational political incentives, emerging work points to the role of personality. Still, we lack a unified account of how the two interact. Drawing on foundational insights from psychology, this paper hypothesizes that politicians’ use of incivility reflects rational strategic considerations that are systematically moderated by individual personality traits. To test this idea, I present evidence from novel datasets combining elite survey data, unobtrusive personality measures, and direct observations of politicians’ social media communication across multiple democracies, including an in-depth analysis of high-ranking Belgian politicians. By linking personality profiles to observable incivility, the findings show that while rational incentives largely drive incivility in elite communication, their expression varies markedly across personality types. Overall, these results clarify when political incivility serves democratic scrutiny – and when it risks amplifying the voices of more assertive and aggressive elites – thereby harming the quality of political debate.