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The purpose of this study was twofold: to explore the everyday experiences and interpretations of verbalised self-criticism in emergent adult males (ages 18–25) in social contexts and, secondly, to explore the utilisation of vignettes in phenomenological research exploring social processes.

Four Australian male participants participated in semi-structured interviews to share the participants' experiences and sense-making of self-criticism in social contexts. Vignettes of verbalised self-criticism were used to prompt attentive reflection. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the data.

Four superordinate themes emerged from participant responses: (1) searching for context, (2) self-improving or self-attacking, (3) self-criticism as a social tool, and (4) engaging and distancing responses.

This study provides useful insights into how verbalised self-criticism in social contexts was experienced by four emergent adult males. Furthermore, this study provides a working example of how vignettes can be used within an interpretative phenomenological analysis frame to prompt attentive reflection on sensitive, nuanced social phenomenon. Implications for future research are discussed. Further research could use this study's findings to explore female responses to verbalised self-criticism and potential causality between contextual factors and the nature of responses.