title: Accentuate the negative: the positive effects of negative acknowledgment.
abstract: Three studies investigated the capacity of negative acknowledgment, the admission of an unfavorable quality, to elicit relatively positive responses. In Study 1, an acknowledgment that a written paragraph was confusing led individuals to rate the paragraph as clearer than they did when no acknowledgment was offered. In Study 2, a foreign speaker was rated as possessing a clearer voice when he acknowledged his strong accent than when he did not. In Study 3, a hypothetical college applicant's acknowledgment of receiving less than stellar high school grades resulted in a more positive evaluation of those grades. The interpersonal risks and benefits of negative acknowledgment as an impression-management strategy are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081, USA. award1@swarthmore.edu
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ward
authors.forename: Lyle
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brenner
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D003657:Decision Making; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012650:Self Disclosure; D012660:Semantics; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception