Whataboutism

2026-03-09

AI Summary

This study investigates how “whataboutism”—a rhetorical strategy that deflects criticism by counter-accusing the accuser—undermines social norms against offensive speech and, in highly polarized societies, may precipitate a collapse of civility norms. We develop an infinite-horizon psychological game-theoretic model in which individuals from opposing factions balance the benefits of offensive expression against the risk of social condemnation. For the first time, we formally model whataboutism as an equilibrium strategy within this dynamic psychological game. Through subgame-perfect equilibrium analysis, we demonstrate how external criticism is systematically neutralized by this strategy. Our findings show that whataboutism not only amplifies the prevalence of offensive discourse but can also lead to the complete erosion of shared social norms in polarized environments.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Social Choice / Voting
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Natural Language Processing: Discourse, Pragmatics & Argument Mining

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems

Abstract

We propose a model of whataboutism -- a rhetorical strategy that deflects criticism by citing similar misconduct that goes uncriticized on the critic's side -- and study its implications for social norms governing offensive speech. In an infinite-horizon psychological game with two rival camps, agents weigh the intrinsic benefit of offensive speech against the risk of condemnation. External criticism can be deflected via an equilibrium-based whataboutism rebuttal. We characterize the unique dynamically stable Psychological Subgame Perfect Equilibrium and show that the availability of whataboutism exacerbates offensive speech, to the extent that civility norms can break down entirely, especially in polarized societies.

Problem

• whataboutism
• offensive speech
• social norms
• polarization
• civility

Innovation

• whataboutism
• psychological game
• social norms
• subgame perfect equilibrium
• offensive speech