Can Accepting Criticism Be an Effective Impression Management Strategy for Public Figures? A Comparison with Denials and a Counterattack

Abstract

The way public figures react to criticism can influence perceptions of and trust in them. We tested whether politicians who openly accepted criticism were perceived as more moral and warmer (i.e., more communal) and were trusted more than politicians who rejected criticism. Using fictitious politicians, Experiments 1–3 showed the expected positive effect of accepting criticism on communion and trust, moderated neither by the politician’s party affiliation (Experiment 2) nor by attacked dimension (competence or morality; Experiment 3, preregistered). With a front-runner in an upcoming election as target, Experiment 4 replicated the positive effect, but only for participants with a political orientation matching the politician’s affiliation. Taken together, acknowledging mistakes can be an effective impression management strategy for public figures.

Notes

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to Caroline Aden, Julia Koch, Sepehr Yar Moammer, Leonie Oettler, and Dominik Sinz for their support collecting data of Experiment 1, and to Marianna Schmieder for her collaboration in planning and conducting Experiment 3.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Experiment 4 was conducted before Experiments 2–3.

2 We ran all analyses also with the whole sample (N = 536) yielding similar main and interaction effects. Applying different rules for outliers changed the interaction effects (mostly for trust), but did not affect the main effects.

3 We ran only one additional, pre-registered experiment examining a causal mechanism (manuscript is in preparation). We did not include this experiment in this manuscript as it tests additional hypotheses going beyond the hypotheses tested here. If results from this experiment are included in the meta-analyses, results again support effects on politicians’ positive evaluation (H1 and H2), M d = 0.42, SE = 0.06, on competence, M d = 0.17, SE = 0.06, and on assertiveness, M d = –0.47, SE = 0.06.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a PhD scholarship of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Germany, and by the research group “Communication, Media, and Politics” funded by the research initiative of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.