Human Communication Research ISSN 0360-3989

Sugaring the Pill: Assessing Rhetorical Strategies Designed to Minimize

Defensive
Reactions to Group Criticism
Matthew J. Hornsey, Erin Robson, Joanne Smith, Sarah Esposo, & Robbie M. Sutton

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School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072,

Australia
School of Psychology, University of Kent, Keynes College, Canterbury CT27NP, UK
People are considerably more defensive in the face of group criticism when the
criticism
comes from an out-group rather than an in-group member (the intergroup
sensitivity efect). We tested three strategies that out-group critics can use to
reduce this heightened defensiveness. In all studies, Australians received criticism
of their country either from another Australian or from a foreigner. In Experiment
1, critics who attached praise to the criticism were liked more and agreed with
more than were those who did not. In Experiment 2, out-group critics were liked
more and aroused less negativity when they acknowledged that the problems
they identified in the target group were shared also by their own in-group. In both
experiments, the ameliorative effects of praise and acknowledgment were fully
mediated by attributions of constructiveness. Experiment 3 tested the strategy of
spotlighting; that is, of putting on the record that you intend your comments to
apply to just a portion of the group rather than to the whole group. This strategy
which did not directly address the attributional issues that are presumed to
underpin the intergroup sensitivity effectproved ineffective. Practical and
theoretical implications for intergroup communication are discussed.
In literature on interpersonal and small group communication, researchers hold an
ambivalent approach toward criticism. On one hand, there is an acknowledgment
that criticism can be destructive. Poor use of criticism, for example, is perceived
to be a major cause of conflict in organizations (Baron, 1988) and perceptions that
ones spouse is critical of you is a major predictor of relapse among depressives
(Hooley & Teasdale, 1989). Personal criticism is seen as a dysfunctional strategy
for dealing with conflict (e.g., Hocker & Wilmot, 1991), whereas absence of
criticism is seen to be a relational maintenance strategy (Canary & Stafford,
1992). Relationships, Gottman (1994; Gottman & Levenson, 1992) showed that
criticism of ones partner contributes to cascades of isolation and withdrawal and
is a key factor that characterizes distressed couples. Gottman concluded that to
achieve marital stability, five positive behaviors should be communicated for
every one negative behavior.
Despite this, it is also clear that people occasionally need criticism to grow and to
develop. Criticism helps signpost weaknesses and potentially provides a map for
how to correct them. Providing negative feedback about past and current behavior
is a cornerstone of many performance interventions; for example, performance
appraisals in the workplace, feedback on assignments, and reviews of scholarly
articles. Even in intimate relationships, it might on occasion be functional to

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highlight aspects of a partners behavior that need addressing. Criticism can be

directed at people as individuals (e.g., you are racist) or it can be directed at
peoples groups (e.g., Australians are racist). In the current paper, we examine
the second form of criticism. Specifically, we examine how people respond when,
for example, they receive negative comments about their country, or their
profession, or their religion. Like criticism of individuals, criticism of groups can be
a prerequisite for reform. Where a nation, for example, is out of touch with
international norms of environmental responsibility, or military conduct, or respect
for human rights, then criticism from within and outside the country can be a
catalyst for positive change. If received defensively, however, criticism can lead to
disharmony, schism, conflict, and denial.
This paper examines some of the strategies that can be used to reduce resistance
to criticism of groups. In examining this question, we first review the limited
research that has been conducted to date on when and why people respond in a
defensive versus an open-minded fashion to group criticism. We then describe
and test three strategies for reducing resistance. Although all three are intuitively
appealing strategies, we argue (and show) that only two of these strategies help
overcome the active ingredient that promotes defensiveness: suspicious
attributions about motive. Throughout, we acknowledge points of contact between
the research on group criticism and the research on interpersonal criticism but
maintain that insights that can be drawn from one arena cannot be translated
unproblematically into the other. One phenomenon that helps illustrate the unique
nature of intergroup criticism is the intergroup sensitivity effect.
Intergroup sensitivity effect
It is only very recently that researchers have systematically examined the
psychology of responses to group-directed criticism. One factor that has been
shown to have a profound effect on how people respond to group criticism is the
group membership of the critic. Put simply, when criticism of a group is delivered
by outsiders (otherwise known as out-group members), the criticisms arouse more
defensiveness than when the very same comments are delivered by insiders (or
in-group members).
This phenomenon is labeled the intergroup sensitivity effect. This effect appears
to be robust, having now been demonstrated across at least eight different
intergroup contexts, each using different criticisms, and using participants from
both collectivist and individualist cultures (see Hornsey, 2005, for a review).
Furthermore, the effect is relatively large: Criticisms that might be cautiously
accepted when delivered by an in-group member are aggressively denied if
delivered by an out-group member (Hornsey & Imani, 2004; Hornsey, Oppes, &
Svensson, 2002; Sutton, Elder, & Douglas, 2006).
With its focus on group identities, influence, and threat, the intergroup sensitivity
effect can be located within the language and meta-theoretical umbrella of the
social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1991). Self-categorization
theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), for example, argues
that the more strongly people identify with a salient group, the more they shift
their selfdefinition from the personal to the collective level. This depersonalization
around the group prototype is accompanied by a perceptual enhancement of
intragroup similarities and intergroup differences, a process that is assumed to
underpin conformity and group-mediated attitude change (Turner, 1991). One

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consequence of this is that people are more likely to embrace messages from ingroup members than from out-group members.
There are two reasons, however, to believe that the intergroup sensitivity effect is
not merely a specific example of this tendency for people to be cognitively
predisposed to embrace in-group messages more readily than out-group
messages. First, proponents of the social identity approach would not argue that
members would assimilate around the attitudes of any group member; indeed,
researchers in this field typically argue that in-group deviants and dissenters face
exaggerated levels of hostility as the group tries to preserve its positive
distinctiveness (Abrams, Hogg, & Marques, 2005). Second, the tendency to accept
in-group comments more than outgroup comments does not apply when people
make positive comments about the group. When participants read praise of their
university (Hornsey et al., 2002, Study 1b) or of their country (Hornsey & Imani,
2004; Hornsey et al., 2002, Study 1a), they do not rate the speaker or the
comments differently depending on whether they are attributed to an in-group or
an out-group member. This suggests that the intergroup sensitivity effect is
specific to criticisms and not a more generalized tendency to cognitively
assimilate to in-group members (Hornsey, 2006)
Heightened defensiveness in the face of criticism from outsiders is a concern
because there are times when it is important that groups listen to criticism. If a
group is not criticized, it can become complacent and stagnant as maladaptive,
corrupt, or inefficient practices continue unchallenged. Indeed, a lack of dissent
and criticism has been shown to lead to suboptimal decision making (Postmes,
Spears, & Cihangir, 2001), the consequences of which can be disastrous (Janis,
1982). Furthermore, there are times when negative feedback needs to come
from outside the group because ingroup members are unwilling or unable to
recognize the problems within their own culture. In short, groups occasionally
need a nudge along from outsiders to help them pick up their game and reform
their culture. And yet research on the intergroup sensitivity effect suggests that
such pleas for change face heightened resistance.
One intuitive way that outsiders could guard themselves against defensiveness is
to engage in credentialing; that is, to equip themselves with a great deal of
knowledge and experience of the target group (see Cupach & Metts, 1994, for a
discussion of this strategy in the context of interpersonal conflict). Interestingly,
however, this strategy does not appear to work. Hornsey and Imani (2004)
designed studies in which experience and group membership could be
manipulated independently of each other. In these studies, Australians received
an extract from an interview with a person who criticized Australians for being
uncultured and racist. These comments were attributed either to another
Australian, a foreigner who had spent many years living in Australia, or a foreigner
with no experience of Australia. The consistent finding was that in-group critics
aroused less defensiveness than outsiders and that experience did not help the
outsiders. In other words, critics who had spent large chunks of their life in
Australia were treated no differently from critics who had never set foot in the
country. This suggests that perceptions of epistemic authority did not underpin
the intergroup sensitivity effect and that outsiders cannot reduce defensiveness
merely by boosting and communicating their credentials as experienced judges.
Using language to overcome the intergroup sensitivity effect

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The failure of credentialing to overcome the intergroup sensitivity effect poses the
question of what outsiders can do to neutralize or overcome defensiveness in the
face of group criticism. One possibility is to adjust the language they use. Before
engaging in (interpersonal) communications that might be considered
argumentative or aggressive, people edit their arguments before uttering them
(Hample & Dallinger, 1988). Arguments are tailored and so is the language used
to express them. Communicators use disclaimers (Hewitt & Stokes, 1975),
equivocations (Bavelas, Black, Bryson, & Mullett, 1988), and ingratiation tactics
(Berscheid & Walster, 1978) to maximize the effectiveness of their message and
to conform to rules about politeness and maintenance of face (Brown & Levinson,
1987; Cupach & Carson, 2002; Cupach & Metts, 1990, 1994; Oetzel & TingToomey, 2003; Rogan & Hammer, 1994; Ting- Toomey, 1988). Like any
communication, criticisms can be delivered well and they can be delivered poorly,
depending on the sensitivity and skill with which critics tailor their language to
deliver the message (Baron, 1988; Tracy, van Dusen, & Robinson, 1987). Although
research on this question is surprisingly scarce, certain principles can be intuited:
Criticism should be specific, should be oriented toward the future rather than the
past, should avoid attributing poor performance to internal causes, should be
clear, and should avoid being biting or sarcastic (Baron, 1988; Ogilvie & Haslett,
1985).
The research question examined in this paper is: What strategies are available to
the outsider who wishes to promote change in another group? To answer this
question, we sought a theoretical base that went beyond intuitive notions of
respectfulness, specificity, and so forth, and could grapple with the emergent
processes that govern intergroup as opposed to interpersonal criticism. To achieve
this, it is necessary to engage with the deeper question of what it is about a
critics out-group status that arouses so much defensiveness in the first place.
Only by coming to a theoretical understanding of what drives the intergroup
sensitivity effect, can we generate predictions about which strategies should work
and which should not.
The literature to date has shown quite consistently that at the heart of the
intergroup sensitivity effect is an attributional bias. Attributions play a central role
in communication theories, having been found to influence responses to excuses
(Weiner, Amirkhan, Folkes, & Verette, 1987), resistance to compliance requests
(Wilson, Cruz, Marshall, & Rao, 1993), relational disengagement (Cody, Kersten,
Braaten, & Dickson, 1992), rejection (e.g., Folkes, 1982), bad news (e.g., Bies &
Sitkin, 1992), and conflict (e.g., Bradbury & Fincham, 1990). With respect to
group-directed criticism, Hornsey (2005) argues that people look past the content
of the words and make judgments about the integrity of the critics motives; in
other words they ask themselves the question: Why would they say that? If
they perceive that the critic has relatively sinister or destructive motives, then
this provides an opportunity to dismiss the message, and heightens negativity
toward the speaker and his or her comments. However, if they can see no reason
to assume that the speaker has destructive motives, they are free to assess the
content of the message on its merits. When making this judgment about motive,
receivers of criticism factor in a number of considerations, not least of which is
the group membership of the critic.
In short, when in-group members criticize the group, people are more likely to

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assume that they are motivated by constructive reasons than when the same
comments are delivered by an outsider, and these differing perceptions of motive
drive the effect. This is consistent with much evidence showing that people expect
ingroup members to look after them and to show reciprocity of favors (e.g.,
Brewer, 1981; Tanis & Postmes, 2005; Yamagishi & Kiyonari, 2000), whereas they
expect outgroup members to have hostile and competitive intentions (e.g., Judd,
Park, Yzerbyt, Gordijn, & Muller, 2005; Vivian & Berkowitz, 1993).
Evidence for this attributional explanation includes mediational analyses
demonstrating that the intergroup sensitivity effect tends to disappear when
attributions of constructiveness are controlled for (e.g., Hornsey & Imani, 2004).
There is also
experimental evidence reinforcing the notion that it is attributions
of constructiveness that are the most proximal driver of the effect. For example, if
participants are led to believe that the in-group critic is not committed to the
groupeither because they are a low identifier (Hornsey, Trembath, & Gunthorpe,
2004) or because they are a newcomer to the group (Hornsey, Grice, Jetten,
Paulsen, & Callan, 2007)they arouse just as much defensiveness as outsiders.
Figure 1 provides a summary of the attributional model of responses to group
criticism.
In devising and testing strategies for reducing resistance to group criticism, we
were guided by this attributional account of the intergroup sensitivity effect. If it is
true that heightened levels of defensiveness in the face of out-group criticisms are
driven by suspicions about the motives of the out-group speaker, then any
strategy used by out-group speakers to minimize distrust with regard to their
motives should be particularly useful in reducing defensiveness. One such
strategy might be to preface criticism with positive feedback (sweetening).
In this case, the outgroup members are presenting the criticisms in such a way as
to disarm peoples expectations that they are making the criticism as part of a
wider intergroup competition for prestige and status. With these suspicions
assuaged, in-group members might be better positioned psychologically to focus
on the content of the message in a balanced and nondefensive way. This strategy
is tested in Experiment 1 . Experiment 3 tests an alternative strategy that has
powerful intuitive appeal but does not address the attributional concerns that
have been argued to be the primary driver of defensiveness: namely, putting on
the record that you intend your comments to apply to just a portion of the group
rather than to the whole group (spotlighting). If attributions of constructiveness
really do underpin the intergroup sensitivity effect, we should see the first two
strategies work, whereas the third strategy should not.
Experiment 1
It is commonly assumed that the strategic use of praise (sweetening) can help
soften responses to negative feedback; for example, in our department, tutors are
advised to sandwich their negative feedback between pieces of praise when
marking assignments. This common wisdom has filtered into textbooks and
manuals, but there have been surprisingly few controlled empirical tests of
whether the strategy actually works. Of the research that has been conducted,
the evidence for praise is mixed. Where effects have been found, there has been
no examination of what might mediate the effects. Experiment 1 was designed to
respond to these limitations.
From the perspective of research on the intergroup sensitivity effect, it is

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reasonable to expect that praise might help reduce defensiveness toward group
criticism. Our argument is that, when responding to criticism of their groups,
people draw hypotheses about what is going on in the heart and mind of the
critic: Do they care about us? Are they trying to be constructive? If praise is
attached to the criticism, it might be that recipients would be more likely to
answer these questions in the affirmative. The more generous attributions
associated with praise should then flow on to reduced levels of defensiveness.
One potential problem with sweetening, however, is that the strategy might be
seen by a skeptical in-group audience as an overly transparent attempt to soften
criticism. This could result in the praise simply being dismissed, or even worse, it
could result in group members feeling as though the speaker is being
overaccommodating or patronizing. Even in the absence of skepticism about the
motives for the praise, it could be that the praise would not be processed or
remembered, given that it is potentially overshadowed by the more threatening
and ego-involving criticism.
Indeed, social theorists have long recognized the tendency for some people to
selectively attend to negative experiences and to discount positive experiences
when receiving feedback from the social world, a phenomenon sometimes
referred to as the negativity effect (Fiske, 1980), negativity bias (Baumeister,
Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001; Rozin & Royzman, 2001), or mnemic
neglect (Green, Pinter, & Sedikides, 2005). Consistent with this, an analysis of
student reactions to teacher feedback revealed that bad feedback had a much
stronger effect on perceptions than good feedback (Coleman, Jussim, & Abraham,
1987). Although good feedback was seen to be more credible, bad feedback was
seen to be more diagnostic of what the teacher really thought. Thus, despite the
assumed consensus that praise is helpful in softening the blow when delivering
negative feedback, there are theoretical reasons to test this assumption
empirically.
In Experiment 1, Australian participants read criticisms of their group that were
attributed either to another Australian (in-group critic) or to a non-Australian (outgroup critic). Depending on condition, the criticism was either contextualized with
praise or it was not. Consistent with the intergroup sensitivity effect, we predicted
that out-group critics would be liked less than in-group critics and that their
comments would arouse more negativity and less agreement than the in-group
critics comments. We also predicted that, when praise was attached to the
criticism, levels of interpersonal liking and agreement would increase and levels of
negativity would decrease relative to when praise was not used. If we were to
obtain effects of praise, it was expected that these effects would be mediated by
attributions of constructiveness.
(THE DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT WAS CUT OUT TO SHORTEN THE
ARTICLE)
Discussion
There has been limited empirical research examining whether negative feedback
is more likely to be absorbed if the criticisms are contextualized by praise, either
at the interpersonal level or the intergroup level. Although such a strategy is
intuitively appealing, there are theoretical reasons to challenge the assumed link
between praise and responses to criticism that make empirical scrutiny of the
relationship important. If praise is recognized as simply a strategy to reduce

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defensiveness toward the criticisms, then people might dismiss or gloss over the
positive feedback and focus exclusively on the more diagnostic, threatening, and
ego-involving criticisms, rendering the praise ineffectual. Indeed, in our sample,
we found that people who were exposed to both praise and criticism of Australia
were far more likely to cognitively focus on the negative than the positive
feedback.
Despite this, there was some evidence that praise could help reduce
defensiveness toward group criticism. The effects of praise were most marked on
ratings of how likeable the critic was seen to be: Critics who used praise were
seen to be much more likeable than those who did not. A weaker but still reliable
effect emerged on agreement: When praise was used participants agreed with the
criticisms more than when praise was not used. On negativity, however, praise
had no reliable effect at all. Despite the mixed picture, the overall conclusion is
that it is better to praise than to not praise, particularly if being liked is important
to you.
In addition to testing the effects of praise on reducing defensiveness, another aim
of the current study is to examine why praise might help reduce defensiveness.
Our mediation analysis showed evidence consistent with our argument that
attributions underpin responses to group-directed criticism. Specifically, critics
who used praise were assumed to be motivated by more constructive reasons
than did those who did not praise, and this led to higher ratings on likeability and
agreement. Thus, the current study does not just provide an early attempt to
empirically assess the merits of praise, it also provides clues as to the
psychological mechanisms through which praise might work.
It should be noted that in all cases, the effects of praise need to be interpreted
against the backdrop of a robust intergroup sensitivity effect. In all cases, outgroup critics aroused more defensiveness than did in-group critics. The effects of
praise worked equally for in-group and out-group critics, so this strategy should be
seen as a way of reducing defensiveness per se rather than a way of reducing the
intergroup sensitivity effect. Inspection of effect sizes shows that the effect of
group membership was greater than the effect of praise on ratings of agreement
and negativity. Indeed, across all the measures, an out-group critic who used
praise aroused just as much defensiveness as an in-group member who did not
use this strategy. This helps reinforce the uphill battle that people face when
directing negative feedback at out-groups.
Experiment 2 THIS EXPERIMENT WAS CUT OUT TO SHORTEN THE TEXT)
Experiment 3
In Experiment 3, we assess a third strategy for reducing defensiveness that
possesses a similar intuitive appeal to the first two but would not be likely to
change attributions of constructiveness. This is the strategy of spotlighting; that
is, of putting on the record that you intend your comments to apply to just a
portion of the group rather than to the whole group. If our attributional
explanation of defensiveness is correct, then we should find that this strategy has
little or no effect on responses to criticism.
Despite the fact that spotlighting does not directly address the attributional bias
that drives the intergroup sensitivity effect, there are at least three reasons why it
might be otherwise expected to work. First, spotlighting seems consistent with the
principle of specificity that researchers on interpersonal criticism consider

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important when presenting feedback (Baron, 1988). Second, research suggests

that people disapprove of individuals who make generalizations about groups,
even if the generalizations apply to ostensibly positive traits (Mae & Carlston,
2005). Thus, critics who are careful not to make their generalizations about the
group overly sweeping (i.e., by spotlighting) might be seen as less objectionable
and their comments might subsequently seem more palatable.
A third possible reason that spotlighting might work is that it helps reduce any
threat to personal identity associated with group criticism. When somebody
criticizes a group to which we belong, this undoubtedly represents a challenge to
our social or group identity. However, it is ambiguous whether this also represents
a criticism of our values as an individual. Imagine if your country was criticized for
being racist using the kind of language used in the scripts of the current
experiments; it is unclear in this situation whether the critic sees these values in
all, most, or some of your compatriots.
But our assumptions about this might have an impact on the degree of threat we
feel. If we assume that the critic only intended the criticism to apply to some of
our compatriots, we might feel relaxed in the knowledge that the critic would not
automatically assume that we were racist individuals, and that he or she would
probably exonerate us from this allegation if the critic were to meet us. In this
case, the criticism represents a threat to our social identity without representing a
threat to our personal or individual identity. But if we assume that the critic were
to believe that all ormost of our
compatriots share this quality, then this potentially adds another stratum of threat
to the situation; not only is this a criticism of the values of our country but also is
a criticism of our own personal values. This might result in a heightened degree of
defensiveness.
There is reason to believe that any anxieties associated with feeling lumped
together in the face of group criticism might be particularly strong when being
criticized by an out-group member. Research shows that people typically have a
more homogenized view of out-groups than they do of their own groups (Ostrom
& Sedikides, 1992), partly because they have more experience with their own
group
(Linville, Fischer, & Salovey, 1989) and partly because they have more concrete
representations of in-group exemplars (Park, Judd, & Ryan, 1991). If people have
nave theories in line with this out-group homogeneity effect, then they would
probably assume that criticisms from out-group members were intended to apply
to the majority of the group. In contrast, when we hear criticisms from in group
members, we would assume that the in-group critic would be aware of the high
degree of variation that exists within the group in terms of attitudes and
behaviors.
In short, it could be that criticisms from outsiders are seen to be more overly
generalized than criticisms from insiders, and that this might help contribute to
the intergroup sensitivity effect independent of any attributions about whether or
not the critic intended the comments to be constructive. One way for an outgroup critic to overcome this perception is to make it clear that the criticisms do
not apply to everyone, but rather to a portion of the group population.
In Experiment 3, Australian participants received criticism of their country from
either an in-group or an out-group member. The critic either used spotlighting or

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did not. We predicted an intergroup sensitivity effect, such that out-group

members would elicit more defensiveness than in-group members. Given the lack
of previous research on generalizations with regard to criticism, it was not
possible to make strong predictions with regard to the effects of spotlighting. On
the basis of the logic outlined above, we might expect that spotlighting would
result in less defensiveness than a control condition and that the ameliorative
effects of spotlighting might be particularly noticeable for out-group criticisms.
However, if we are to take seriously the notion that attributions of
constructiveness play a central role in driving defensiveness, we might expect
that spotlighting will have no reliable effect on responses to criticism.
Discussion
Consistent with the intergroup sensitivity effect, peoples responses to criticism
were not just influenced by the content of the message but by the source of the
message: In-group critics were liked more, were attributed more constructive
motives, were agreed with more, and aroused less negativity than out-group
critics. However, the strategy did not have any reliable effects on responses.
Spotlighting had no significant effect on how people felt about the critic or the
message. Naturally, caution needs to be exercised when interpreting
nonsignificant effects, but it is difficult in this case to attribute the null result to
anything other than the fact that the strategy was ineffective. It cannot be
attributed to a failed manipulation because the manipulation check worked: Those
who spotlighted were assumed to be generalizing their comments to a smaller
percentage of group members than those who did not spotlight. It cannot be
attributed to unresponsive or insensitive measures because the same measures
have yielded sizeable effects of group membership. Neither is it likely to be a
question of statistical power, given that the effect sizes on negativity, likeability,
and agreement were negligible. Furthermore, on likeability and agreement, the
means trended nonsignificantly in the opposite direction to what would be
expected if spotlighting were to work. It seems unlikely that increases in sample
size would have changed the broad pattern of results. In sum, it appears that
spotlighting simply does not help. On one hand, this might seem surprising
because spotlighting is an intuitive and widely used strategy (Im not saying
youre all like this.). From a theoretical point of view, the reason could be that the
strategy does not significantly alter the attributions that people make about the
motives for the criticism. Qualifying the comments does not substantially change
whether the comments are motivated by constructive or destructive reasons and
so does not help ease the suspicion that triggers defensiveness.
General discussion
There is a generalized tendency for people to feel more defensive when they
receive group-directed criticism from an outsider than an insider. The three
studies here reinforce this point: Out-group critics were liked less, agreed with less
(In Experiments 1 and 3 only), and aroused more negativity than when the same
comments were made by an in-group member. The reason for this is that, in the
absence of any other information, outsiders are attributed less constructive
motives than insiders, which then promotes high levels of defensiveness. This
finding on the one hand is relatively pessimistic because it suggests that outsiders
face defensiveness because of something they cannot readily changetheir
group membership. But it also offers a signpost as to how to overcome the

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problem posed by the intergroup sensitivity effect. If outsiders can defuse

suspicion about the integrity of their motives, then theoretically defensiveness
should be reduced. The studies reported here investigated three strategies that,
on the basis of both intuition and theory, might be expected to be effective in
reducing defensiveness in the face of group criticism. In Experiments 1 and 2,
some encouraging signs emerged. If out-group critics contextualize their criticisms
with praise, or if they acknowledge that similar problems exist in their own group,
then defensiveness is reduced, at least on some measures. This suggests that,
although out-group membership is an impediment to acceptance when it comes
to criticism, this impediment can be overcome through the strategic use of
language. This is not a trivial point. Identifying strategies to overcome the
intergroup sensitivity effect is something that is potentially of applied relevance to
members of oppressed minorities, human rights groups, environmental groups,
and other groups for whom collective action is a matter of trying to win over
change from the outside. In this sense, reducing defensiveness in the face of outgroup criticisms seems an important precondition for reform, reconciliation, and
reinvention, and identifying strategies that can assist outgroup members to be
heard is an important applied research question. The news was less positive,
however, with regard to the third strategy tested here. Spotlightingin the sense
of putting on the record that the criticisms were not intended to apply to everyone
had no reliable effect on responses, either positive or negative. Although there
are inevitable interpretational difficulties associated with drawing meaning out of
a null result, from an attributional perspective it can be argued that spotlighting
failed because it did not address the suspicion about motive that has previously
been shown to work against outsiders who criticize.
The paradigm we used here, in which participants read a handful of sentences
from what are ostensibly extracts from an interview, was used because we felt it
maintained a sensible balance between internal and external validity. Because
participants believe the criticisms are real comments from a real person, we have
succeeded in placing the participants in a potentially threatening and emotionladen environment while simultaneously maintaining a level of experimental
control that would not be possible if participants were to see a speaker or even to
hear the comments by audiotape. Having said that, we acknowledge that it would
be ideal in the future to examine the strategies in more naturalistic environments
and potentially using longer scripts.
We also consciously used the same target group (Australians) and the same
criticisms across experiments so as to create a level playing field within which
strategies could be meaningfully compared. If we had changed the target group
and the criticisms across experiments, it would not be possible to determine if any
differences observed across studies was due to the different strategies used or
the different intergroup contexts invoked. As mentioned earlier, the intergroup
sensitivity effect and the role of constructiveness in producing the effect has now
been demonstrated across a range of contexts, including criticism of schools,
university students, math science students, social science students,
Queenslanders, allied health professionals, and Muslims (see Hornsey, 2005).
Given that these effects have proven reliable and robust, it would be surprising if
the strategies had dramatically different effects depending on target group or the
content of the criticisms.

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Summary and conclusions

Outsiders who criticize groups struggle to get an open-minded audience, but this
is not to say they are doomed to face defensiveness. Criticisms are a
communicative act framed in language, and we have shown here that strategic
use of rhetoric can be effective in reducing hostile responses to legitimate group
criticism. So it is not advised that outsiders simply let the content of their
criticisms to speak for themselves; if they spend more time framing their
criticisms with certain rhetorical flourishes, then this can pay off in terms of
reducing hostility and winning acceptance of the message. Although we have
assessed only a limited number of strategies here, a pattern is beginning to
emerge that helps predict which strategies will work and which will not. No matter
how intuitively appealing, it seems that for strategies to work they need to be
successful in defusing the suspicion about motive that underpins the intergroup
sensitivity effect. This finding has theoretical import, in the sense that it helps
lend support to our attributional model of defensiveness in the face of group
criticism. It also serves a practical purpose in terms of providing a rudimentary
how-to guide for people who are motivated or forced to engage in critical
communication across group divides.