The Dangers of Denial When You're in the Wrong
New research shows why it's better to admit it when you've made a mistake.
Posted November 17, 2020 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
What’s your natural reaction when you’ve made a mistake or otherwise shown your weakness? Do you immediately rush to deny that this ever happened? Do you blame someone else? Or do you accept your mistake or loss? Along similar lines, how do you handle criticism? Do you again resort to the strategy of denial ?
After being defeated at the polls by Joe Biden, President Donald Trump has refused to accept the results as valid . However, according to New York Times author Sara Lyall , Trump is not the first politician to pretend that something bad didn’t actually happen. Throughout history, famous leaders either lost their power, became targets of intense criticism for poor decisions, or engaged in outright fraud, all the time living in a state of denial. They couldn’t accept the threat to their image of signs of weakness or failure and so rather than admit defeat, held onto their power for as long as possible before eventually having to confess to being in the wrong.
You may be able to put yourself in the place of such well-known figures for some mistake or poor decision you've made. You know that it’s hard enough within your own little world to be forced to look weak or flawed. What must it be like when the big world knows you’ve messed up? Denial, according to Nicole Methner, of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg and colleagues (2020) is actually not the best policy from a psychological perspective. Noting that, for politicians, “Defenses are … an essential part of their impression management ,” Methner et al. propose that this comes at a possible price. When they employ those defenses rather than admit to their frailties, “by reframing or outright rejecting criticism, politicians may run the risk of reinforcing the already negative stereotype of politicians as self-interested and dishonest” (p. 254).
The German authors base their argument on the social psychological literature on person perception which emphasizes the competing goals of agency and communion in impression management . Agency goals involve looking effective and successful. Communion goals involve honesty and likeability. Putting this in personal terms, consider how you evaluate yourself. You probably think that other people evaluate you on the basis of your competence so it's best not to show your weaknesses. However, and perhaps ironically, other people evaluate you more on the communion goals of likeability and honesty. Admitting your weaknesses therefore is what preserves your image, even as you have to swallow a piece or more of humble pie.
Testing this framework in the political arena, Methner et al. designed a set of experiments in which participants read bogus news articles in which a public figure (politican A) was criticized for a mistake by the member of another political party (politician B). Across the first three studies, the politicians were described as male, and all were fictitious characters. In one of these scenarios, politician A allowed a data security breach of government medical records. In the denial condition, A rejected the criticism, saying that B was wrong. In the acceptance condition, A agreed with B and said that he would remedy the deficiency as soon as possible.
The researchers asked participants to rate politician A along the dimensions of communion with these four items: fair, considerate, reliable, and helpful. Agency ratings involved these four items: intelligent, competent, capable, and efficient. The researchers also asked participants to rate A on perceived trustworthiness.
The first two of the experiments involved a failing in politician A’s ability. In the third experiment in the study, politician A not only made a mistake (competence failing) but also engaged in cronyism ( morality failing). This allowed the researchers to recreate the other type of political failing, then, in which a public figure commits fraud, bribery, or just out and out lies. Ask yourself how you feel when you read news stories with similar themes. How do you rate the main protagonists? Who seems the most trustworthy to you? Who do you like better? Who would you vote for if you had the choice?
Participants in the German studies ranged from university students to online adult samples. As one factor to add into the equation, the research team also ascertained party affiliation from participants to determine the role of what they call "shared social identity " with the main character in the story.
In general, all three findings supported the Methner et al.’s prediction in that the admission of wrongdoing produced higher ratings on trustworthiness, honesty, fairness, and likeability, leading the authors to conclude that “participants perceived a politician who accepted criticism as much more communal and trusted him somewhat more than a politician denying the same criticism” (p. 263). If you want to be liked, in other words, admit to your mistakes.
In the final study, the German researchers used the case of an actual politician, the front-runner in an upcoming state election named Malu Dreyer. This time, the politician was a woman as was her challenger, Julia Klöckner. Participants read an actual transcript of a speech that Dreyer gave in which she at first accepted Klöckner's criticism only to then go on to attack her opponent. Breaking these reactions down, Methner et al. compared how participants reacted to acceptance, counterattack, and then the combination of the two, taking party affiliation of the participants into account.
As it turns out, party affiliation indeed made a difference in the judgments that participants made of Ms. Dreyer. If they were from the same party as hers, they saw her acceptance in a positive light. Participants from the other party, however, seemed more cynical. They saw her admission as due to ulterior motives in trying to appear honest—in other words, as a "typical" politician.
The finding from the real-world condition of the overall experiment suggests there can be some backlash when a politician accepts criticism for an actual mistake or weakness. Accepting criticism may make you more popular with your own followers, but may fail to win over those who don’t see themselves as being like you.
The overall weight of the findings, however, are in support of acceptance rather than denial as an impression management strategy. The additional advantage of acceptance, as the authors point out, is that you show that you’re on your way to self-improvement. If you accept rather than deny a criticism, you will seem to want to learn from that experience.
As a final piece of the puzzle, the authors also discuss the topic of concession. Conceding goes one step beyond acceptance of criticism, and therefore further reinforces the impression that a politician is honest, trustworthy, and plays fair. It may hurt to admit you've lost, but at least your image will be preserved, an image that will linger once you're no longer in the immediate public eye.
To sum up , there are many object lessons that you can gain from watching the behavior of politicians, even as you react to that behavior in your judgment of them. Creating a favorable impression in your own social world may depend, just as for those public figures, on showing your willingness to accept an honest outcome, even if it hurts.
Methner, N., Bruckmüller, S., & Steffens, M. C. (2020). Can accepting criticism be an effective impression management strategy for public figures? A comparison with denials and a counterattack. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 42 (4), 254–275. doi: 10.1080/01973533.2020.1754824
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Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. , is a Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her latest book is The Search for Fulfillment.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.