'calling-out' vs. 'calling-in' prejudice: Confrontation style affects inferred motive and expected outcomes.

Laypersons differentiate between two confrontations styles, varying in communication style, perceived motive, and typical context: call-outs (typically public, non-accommodating language, and self-promoting confronter) and call-ins (typically private, accommodating language, and education-focused confronter). Popular press espouses a general preference for call-ins relative to call-outs, but no empirical work has addressed perceptions of these confrontation styles. To investigate the presumed efficacy of these styles, we modelled communicative differences with Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), which explores the strategies individuals use to modulate communicative differences with interaction partners.