The present investigation tested the proposition that people use consensus-raising excuses less when they expect to discuss their responses with an informed audience than when they expect to reveal their responses to such an audience without discussion or keep their responses private. Subjects received favorable or unfavorable feedback on an ego-involving social perceptiveness test and made attributions to ability, effort, luck, and task difficulty while expecting to keep their responses private or expecting to reveal them publicly either with or without interaction with an informed audience. Attributions to task difficulty are considered consensus-raising excuses. The results supported the hypothesis.
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