Revealing the Worst First: Stealing Thunder as a Social Influence Strategy

As the contributions to this book clearly indicate, social influence includes a far greater variety of interpersonal strategies than social psychologists traditionally assumed. Many of these influence strategies are indirect, subtle, and even perplexing (see chapters by Butler, Linn, David & Turner, Forgas, Knowles, and Spears, Postmes, Lea, & Watt). For instance, could it ever be an adaptive influence strategy to reveal negative or damaging information about ourselves? In this chapter we argue that the answer is frequently in the affirmative.