Image Credit: Flickr User striaticIt turns out that negative comments aren’t all bad: a new study finds that criticism of a product can actually boost sales significantly if the commenter is polite. In a novel experimental study, a team of university researchers found that respondents were willing to pay 41% more for a wrist watch when it was surrounded by negative comments that couched their opinions in polite qualifiers like “”I don’t want to be mean, but…” This means that attempting the near-impossible — curating a community of civil discourse in comment sections — could be a very lucrative strategy.