Staying neutral can actively damage your reputation, according to a new study from the University of Virginia reported by UVA Today.

For communications professionals, the finding lands squarely against a long-standing instinct: when a contested issue erupts, many organizations default to silence or carefully balanced statements, calculating that neutrality is the safest reputational position. The research suggests that calculation may be wrong.

The study, publicized by UVA Today under the headline "Staying neutral can hurt your reputation, study finds," examined how observers judge people and institutions that decline to take sides. Its central conclusion is blunt: those who stay neutral do not come across as impartial or prudent. They lose standing.

What does the finding mean for practitioners?

The implication is uncomfortable for anyone who drafts holding statements for a living. If neutrality itself carries a reputational penalty, then the "we decline to comment on contested matters" playbook — a default in corporate communications, crisis response and public affairs — may exact a cost that teams have never quantified.

That cost likely compounds in polarized environments, where audiences increasingly read silence as a signal in itself. A neutral stance, the research indicates, does not read as neutrality to the people watching. It reads as a character judgment, and an unfavorable one.

For in-house teams, the practical questions follow quickly:

• Which issues does your organization treat as genuinely neutral ground, and does the audience see them that way?
• Who bears the reputational cost of silence — the brand, the spokesperson, or both?
• Are your issue-monitoring protocols built to flag moments when neutrality becomes the riskier option?

Why the 'safe middle' instinct persists

The neutral-by-default approach survives because it feels defensible internally. Legal teams can sign off on it. Leadership does not have to own a position. The statement writes itself.

But the UVA finding reframes that internal comfort as external exposure. If audiences penalize those who decline to pick a side, then the absence of a position is itself a position — one that observers may judge harshly.

That does not mean every brand should weigh in on every controversy. Choosing which battles to enter, and which genuinely fall outside a company's remit, remains a judgment call. The study's contribution is narrower but important: it removes the assumption that silence is free.

What should comms teams do now?

Start by auditing your neutrality assumptions. Issues your organization has treated as untouchable may already be costing you standing with the audiences that matter.

Second, pressure-test holding statements before they ship. The question is no longer only "can we defend this position?" but also "what does declining to take one cost us?"

Third, prepare leadership for a world where the middle ground is not automatically the low-risk option. That conversation is easier to have with research in hand than in the middle of a crisis.

The full study, reported by UVA Today, adds academic weight to a shift many practitioners have already sensed: audiences are re-pricing silence, and the discount is steeper than the industry assumed.