Rules of engagement: Reactions to internal and external criticism in public debate

Abstract

Since 2014, the refugee crisis has launched a political shockwave across Europe, with consequences for the European Union, the Schengen Zone, and national politics. Within this context, we investigated how public statements about the refugee crisis are received. While debate and criticism are hallmarks of a democratic society, research demonstrates that people respond more negatively to criticism about their group from an outsider compared with an insider. But does this reflect a protective bias in favour of one’s own group, or a more principled position against criticism from outsiders independently of one’s own group membership? In three experimental studies, people apply the principle of preferring internal over external criticism, even to the point of penalizing in‐group members who criticized outgroups. This preference for internal over external criticism is guided by perceptions that internal critics are more constructive and more expert than external critics.

Tolerance as forbearance: Overcoming intuitive versus deliberative objections to cultural, religious, and ideological differences.

“…Furthermore, the normative acceptability of stigmatization has been shown to vary as a function of direct and indirect measures of political tolerance of stigmatized minority groups (Brown-Iannuzzi et al, 2019). In addition, several experimental studies have demonstrated that people apply double standards when determining the acceptability of critical speech with people being more tolerant of critical speech from a member of the criticized group (i.e., an Arab American criticizing Arabs, a native Dutch person criticizing native Dutch, or a refugee criticizing refugees) rather than an out-group member doing the same (Adelman & Verkuyten, 2020b; Lindner & Nosek, 2009). Intolerance arising from intuitive objection is particularly vulnerable to double standards, as the absence of clarity on the objection itself, makes it more likely for double standards to go unnoticed.…”

The intergroup sensitivity effect in mergers and acquisitions: Testing the role of merger motives

“…Importantly, these results are only to be expected when the criticism is directed at the ingroup. As shown by Adelman and Verkuyten (2020), outgroup critics are evaluated more positively than ingroup critics when their criticism is directed at the outgroup. These results suggest that outgroup critics are not rejected because of their outgroup identity per se, but because they are assumed to be less knowledgeable and constructive.…”

Disentangling the intergroup sensitivity effect: Defending the ingroup or enforcing general norms?

“…Across three high‐powered experiments, Adelman and Verkuyten (2020) compared two classic ISE conditions (i.e., ingroup target: ingroup source vs. outgroup source) with two outgroup target conditions (i.e., outgroup target: ingroup source vs. outgroup source). In line with a norm explanation, they found that ingroup members targeting the outgroup also elicited rejection of the message, lower ratings of constructiveness, and lower approval of the commenter's actions in self‐reports.…”

“…We thus term the resulting effect the pure bystander effect . In contrast, Adelman and Verkuyten (2020) investigated criticism by an ingroup member targeted at the outgroup in their bystander conditions. Because these bystander conditions involve a group member criticizing an outgroup, social identity and normative concerns could jointly motivate defensive responses (cf.…”