Politics is about conflicting visions and interests. Conflict is essential in a healthy democracy. But when America faces vast challenges at home and dangers abroad, the optimum degree of conflict shrinks. It becomes ever more important that citizens and political parties work together, trust each other, and compromise for the common good. Over the last twenty years, however, our leaders, our political parties, and our media outlets have become more polarized, strident, and moralistic (i.e., excessively concerned with morality, and certain about their own virtue). When political opponents are demonized rather than debated, compromise and cooperation become moral failings and people begin to believe that their righteous ends justify the use of any means.

This website is a collaborative effort launched at a bipartisan interdisciplinary workshop on "moralistic politics" held at Princeton University in May, 2007. Our goal is to promote "civil politics," by which we mean politics in which power and ideas are hotly contested but opponents are respected as fellow citizens who are assumed to be sincere in their beliefs. We hope to publicize the lastest research in moral psychology and political science to help Americans understand why people are so prone to demonize others and form hostile, self-righteous coalitions. If you agree with us that America needs more civil politics, we urge you to sign the pledge, learn more about moral and political psychology on our resources page (or by watching this 18 minute video), and then take further action to model and promote civil politics in your own community.

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Civility and Polarization in the news:

• Gallup poll shows decline of moderates, increase in conservatives (1/7/10)
• Bayh resignation shows the terrible decline in Senate civility (2/23/10)
• Christians from left and right sign 'civility covenant' (3/26/10)
• Republican leadership rejects joint civility statement (3/26/10)
• Sen. Coburn (R-OK) models civility (4/6/10)
• Poll finds Americans "fed up with political incivility" (4/22/10)
• Former Congressman Jim Leach launches a 50-state civility tour Coburn (7/6/10)

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Who we are:

This website is run by Jonathan Haidt and Matt Motyl at the University of Virginia. The overall project and website were approved by the advisory committee below. However, we do not check every posting with the committee, and therefore none of them can be held responsible for any specific claim or content.

Advisory committee:
James Ault, documentary filmmaker, Northampton MA
Peter Ditto, Dept. of Psychology, U. of California at Irvine
Ravi Iyer, Dept of Psychology, U. of Southern California
Robert Maranto, Dept. of Education, U. of Arkansas
Hal Movius, Principal, The Consensus Building Institute
David Pizarro, Dept. of Psychology, Cornell University
Richard Redding, Chapman University, School of Law