Bilateral Australia: Making a difference? Understanding the impact of criticism on groups.

Lead Research Organisation: University of Kent
Department Name: Sch of Psychology

Abstract

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Description Findings replicated the "intergroup sensitivity effect" in which audiences evaluate external critics (who do not belong to the group in question) and their comments more negatively than internal critics (who do). Participants also evaluated critics more harshly if they denied widely shared positive stereotypes (eg by saying the British are impolite) than if they affirmed negative ones (eg by saying the British are aloof). These reactions happened whether or not participants themselves belonged to the criticised group, but others were unique to participants who belong to it and thus have reason to be defensive. For example, external criticism sometimes led to "retaliatory prejudice": that is, negative perceptions of the critic's social group, and to a "boomerang" effect, where participants were less likely than before to acknowledge their group's failings. Further experiments showed that people do not respond with indiscriminate negativity to all external critics. For example, British participants responded much more negatively to criticism by American than French people of Britain's involvement in the Iraq war, whether their criticism alleged that Britain did not do enough, or should not have been there. Results suggest that this happened because American critics were seen as especially hypocritical, rather than ungrateful or disloyal. Studies further extended previous research on the intergroup sensitivity effect by examining responses to criticism of stigmatised, deviant and victimised groups, and of social systems.
Sectors Education