CHAPTER 11 ARTICLE ASSIGNMENT
Rucker, D. R., & Petty, R. E. (2003). Effects of accusations on the accuser: The moderating role of
accuser culpability. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 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 of Rucker and Pratkanis (2001) and how study 2 follows from study 1, and propose six
different ways to follow up on their research.
Article summary
The article starts by pointing out that research has shown that 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 Rucker, D. D., &
Pratkanis, A. R. (2001), an article 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” paradigm 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 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. Ohio State students were led to believe that they were, as part
of a project designed to improve a company’s personnel evaluation system, reading a real
employee’s personnel file. The supervisor evaluation either mentioned that the employee did not
meet two key deadlines (culpable condition) or that the employee finished the projects early
(nonculpable condition). The employee comment either accused coworkers of slacking off
(accusation present) or did not (accusation absent). Participants then rated the employee on five 7point scales. Conceptually, all five scales seemed to be measuring the extent to which participants
perceived the employee as competent. Thus, not surprisingly, combining the measures resulted in a
scale that had a high degree of internal consistency (Cronbach’s  = .84). The authors obtained a
crossover interaction with culpable employees being rated higher when they accused coworkers
whereas nonculpable employees were rated lower when they accused coworkers.
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 followup research.
Table 1
Helping Students Understand the Article
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
as discussed in Chapter 2, “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
and why the tactic works.
“Nonculpable”: Not guilty, not responsible for the bad deed.
“Culpable”: Guilty, responsible for the bad deed.
Experiment “mundane realism” refers to the degree to which the study, or tasks that the
1
participant performs during the study, resemble a real life situation.
Cornbach’s  of .84 indicates that the items on the scale were internally
consistent (see pp. 101-104 in the text).
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 You will not understand every word or term of the “Mediational analyses”
2
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.