Professional desirability and utility of civility
Literature shows that some social norms are linked to utility, others to desirability. For the former, the researchers showed that conforming people were positively valued without deviants being devalued. For norms linked to desirability, we make the assumption of an inverse process, with more devaluation of deviant behaviors than positive valuation of compliant behaviors. More specifically we make the hypothesis that civility is a norm linked to desirability, with devaluation in case of deviance without positive valorization in case of conformity. Three quasi-experimental researches, focused on utility and desirability of civility in the workplace, corroborate overall our hypothesis. Civility behaviors are systematically more desirable than uncivil behaviors, with more devaluation of the latter than of the former. It has also been observed that uncivil behaviors, considered more undesirable than unnecessary, are rooted more in desirability than in utility.