Reactions to ingroup critics under threat:  Social psychological factors that magnify versus mitigate negative reactions

Adelman, Levi

Publication:
Reactions to ingroup critics under threat: Social psychological factors that magnify versus mitigate negative reactions

dc.contributor.advisor	Nilanjana Dasgupta
dc.contributor.advisor	Bernhard Leidner
dc.contributor.author	Adelman, Levi
dc.contributor.department	University of Massachusetts Amherst
dc.date	2023-09-23T18:18:14.000
dc.date.accessioned	2024-04-26T15:20:14Z
dc.date.available	2024-04-26T15:20:14Z
dc.date.submitted	September
dc.date.submitted	2017
dc.description.abstract	Openness to criticism directed at one’s group can improve the quality of group decisions and alert groups to impending bad decisions. Past research has found that people respond more positively to criticism of their group when it comes from an ingroup versus outgroup member. Four experiments were conducted to examine whether people were less open to criticism of their group from fellow ingroup critics when they felt that their group’s wellbeing was threatened. The results suggest that this preference for criticism from ingroup members is significantly reduced or erased when criticism comes in a context of high threat, which decreases trust, willingness to share the criticism with others, the persuasiveness of ingroup (relative to outgroup) critics’ communication, while also increasing anger. The underlying psychological process behind these negative responses is attributional—greater suspicion of ingroup critics’ motives, which eliminates ingroup critics’ advantage relative to critics from the outside. In Experiment 4, affirming the importance of dissent and free speech as a fundamental value of the ingroup emerged as an effective remedy to increase openness to criticism despite high threat.
dc.description.degree	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
dc.description.department	Psychology
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.7275/10591020.0
dc.identifier.orcid	N/A
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/17252
dc.relation.url	https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2121&context=dissertations_2&unstamped=1
dc.source.status	published
dc.subject	criticism
dc.subject	persuasion
dc.subject	threat
dc.subject	intergroup sensitivity effect
dc.subject	intragroup processes
dc.subject	dissent
dc.subject	Social Psychology
dc.title	Reactions to ingroup critics under threat: Social psychological factors that magnify versus mitigate negative reactions
dc.type	openaccess
dc.type	article
dc.type	dissertation
digcom.contributor.author	isAuthorOfPublication\|email:ladelman@psych.umass.edu\|institution:University of Massachusetts Amherst\|Adelman, Levi
digcom.identifier	dissertations_2/1073
digcom.identifier.contextkey	10591020
digcom.identifier.submissionpath	dissertations_2/1073
dspace.entity.type	Publication