You may want to discuss or assign the following article:
Rucker, D. R., & Petty, R. E. (2003). Effects of accusations on the accuser: The moderating
role of accuser culpability. Personality and Social PsychologyBulletin, 29, 1259-1271.
The authors report on an interesting topic (the benefits of accusing others), describe two interesting 2 X 2 between-subjects factorial experiments, do a great job of showing how study 1 follows from the research o fRucker and Pratkanis (2001) and how study 2 follows from study 1, and propose six different ways to follow up on their research (three of which would be easy for students to do). The article is relatively easy to students to read (to make it even easier, see Table 1).
The article starts by pointing out that research has shownthat attacking others' characters (e.g., negative ads) works. The article then points out that research has not extensively studied the effect of making accusations on the accuser's reputation. Then, the authors report on an article
Rucker,
The effects of the pot calling
the kettle black. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 27, 1494-1507.
showing that an accused person could benefit by accusing others. This effect was called "projection." The authors also try to explain why the projection paradigm obtains the opposite results (the accuser being perceived as less guilty) as what would be obtained with "spontaneous trait transference" paradigm (the accuser being seen as more guilty because the accuser is associated with those accusations ). The authors focus on two differences between the paradigms: (a) accusers in "projection" paradigms may actually be guilty and (b) participants in the "projection"
paradigm process the information more deeply
than participants in the "spontaneous trait transference" paradigm. The authors
then suggest that a person who is suspected of being dishonest may benefit by
accusing others of being dishonest because that accusation shows that the person
actually values honesty, but that a person who is assumed to be honest
doesn't communicate anything new about that person's honesty by accusing
someone else of being dishonest.
In experiment 1, a 2 (employee culpability: culpable or not culpable ) X
2(accusation: present or absent) between-subjects factorial experiment, the
authors tested the hypothesis that culpability would moderate the accusation
effect.
In Experiment 2, the authors replicated Experiment 1 and tested "whether perceived work ethic mediates the effect of accusations on performance ratings for culpable individuals but perceived friendliness mediates the effect of accusations on performance ratings for nonculpable individuals." Procedurally, the main difference from Experiment 1 was adding two 7-point questions about the employee's work ethic and two 7-point questions about the employee's friendliness.
When analyzing the results from the same scale used in Experiment 1, the crossover interaction obtained in Experiment 1 was replicated. When analyzing the results from the new"work ethic" scale, the authors found that making accusations boosted the culpable employee's perceived work ethic, but making accusations did not boost the nonculpable employee's perceived work ethic. When analyzing the results from the new "friendliness" scale, the authors found that making accusations made the nonculpable employee appear less friendly, but that making accusations did not make the culpable employee appear any less friendly. Regression analyses supported the idea that perceived work ethic mediated performance ratings for culpable employees whereas perceived friendliness mediated performance ratings for nonculpable employees. The article concludes by stating some practical implications of the results (criminals and dirty politicians may benefit by making accusations) and by outlining six lines of potential follow-up research.
Helping Students Understand the Article |
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Section |
Tips, Comments, and Problem Areas |
Abstract |
"boundary conditions" of a tactic means conditions under which the tactic will not work. |
Introduction |
"exculpatory": proving that someone is not guilty of the misdeed. "Moderators of an effect" would be variables that reverse, neutralize, weaken, or strengthen the effect. Knowing the moderators allow us to know under what circumstances the tactic will be effective. "Mediators" refer to what mechanisms (in this case, beliefs) are responsible for the effect. Knowing the mediators allows us to know how the tactic works. "Nonculpable": Not responsible for the bad deed. "Culpable": Responsible for the bad deed. |
Experiment 1 |
"mundane realism"refers to the degree to which the study, or tasks that the participant performs during the study, resemble a real life situation. Cronbach's a of .84 indicates that the items on the scale were internally consistent M is an abbreviation for mean, SD for standard deviation ( a measure of spread) If you have trouble understanding the graph (Figure 1), the last two sentences of the results section explain it to you. "asymmetry": Difference--in this case, it refers to making accusations having one effect when a person is innocent but another effect when a person is guilty. Self-handicapping: giving oneself an excuse for performing poorly (e.g., not studying for a test) |
Experiment 2 |
You will not understand every word or term of the "Mediational analyses" subsection of the Results section. You will probably not know what regression is, what the Sobel mediation test is, or what the statistics in parentheses mean. However, you can understand the essence of the Mediational analyses subsection because you don't need to know those terms to understand what the researchers found. "parsimoniously": simply, economically, and elegantly. |