Personality Projection on Culturally Structured Symbols

To investigate whether the characteristics of the recently developed Stanford Preschool Internal-External Scale (SPIES; Mischel, Zeiss, &; Zeiss, 1974) would remain stable for older children of apparently different socioeconomic status than the normative sample, the SPIES was administered to 104 kindergarteners of essentially middle class background in an ordinary elementary school. The findings indicate that the SPIES may be useful in research on perceived locus of control in kindergarteners as well as preschool children.     

Sugaring the Pill: Assessing Rhetorical Strategies Designed to Minimize Defensive Reactions to Group Criticism

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 effect). 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 effect—proved ineffective. Practical and theoretical implications for intergroup communication are discussed.