Creating shared reality in interpersonal and intergroup communication: the role of epistemic processes and their interplay

Marital quality improves self- and partner-reported psychopathy among Chinese couples: A longitudinal study

BACKGROUND

Psychopathy is closely related to many negative interpersonal outcomes in daily life, including violence. Therefore, psychopathy intervention in subclinical individuals has significant application value.

OBJECTIVE

Guided by the personality-relationship transaction model and social investment theory, this study examined how marital quality affects self- and partner-rated psychopathy. We also used the actor-partner interdependence mediation model to explore the mediating effect of communication.

METHODS

We examined self-reports and partner reports of psychopathy, marital quality, and communication among 260 married Chinese couples.

RESULTS

The results indicated that marital quality directly influenced couples' self-rated psychopathy, with both actor and partner effects on husbands' psychopathy and actor effects on wives' psychopathy. Moreover, verbal communication had mediating effects at time 2 between marital quality at time 1 and partner-reported psychopathy at time 3. Meanwhile, the mediating effect of nonverbal communication was not significant.

CONCLUSION

Our investigation of relationship effects on psychopathy revealed that the underlying mechanisms differed between self- and partner-rated psychopathy. The findings can highlight directions for exploring potential intervention strategies for subclinical psychopathy.

Shared reality, memory goal satisfaction, and psychological well-being during conversational remembering

Conversational remembering, or sharing autobiographical memories with others, occurs frequently in everyday communication. The current project examined how the experience of shared reality with a conversation partner when describing autobiographical memories to them can operate to enhance the self, social, and directive uses of a recalled memory and explored the role of shared reality experienced as a result of conversational remembering in psychological well-being. In this project, conversational remembering was examined using experimental (Study 1) and daily diary (Study 2) methodologies. Results indicated that experiencing a shared reality during conversational remembering of an autobiographical memory enhanced self, social, and directive memory goal fulfilment and was positively associated with greater psychological well-being. The current investigation highlights important benefits of sharing our life stories with others, especially those with whom we develop a sense of shared reality.

The contribution of activity theory to modeling multi-actor decision-making: A focus on human capital investments

Making investment decisions is usually considered a challenging task for investors because it is a process based on risky, complex, and consequential choices (Shanmuganathan, 2020). When it comes to Investments in human capital (IHC), such as startups fundings, the aspect of decision-making (DM) becomes even more critical since the outcome of the DM process is not completely predictable. Indeed, it has to take into consideration the will, goals, and motivations of each human actor involved: those who invest as well as those who seek investments. We define this specific DM process as multi-actor DM (MADM) since not a group is making decisions but different actors, or groups of different actors, who – starting from non-coinciding objectives – need to reach a mutual agreement and converge toward a common goal for the success of the investment. This review aims to give insights on psychological contributions to the study of complex DM processes that deal with IHC to provide scholars and practitioners with a theoretical framework and a tool for describing the complex socio-ecological systems involved in the DM processes. For this purpose, we discuss in the paper how the third generation of activity theory (Leont’ev, 1974, 1978;Engeström, 1987, 2001) could be used as an appropriate model to explain the specificities of MADM construct, focusing on the particular case of startup funding. Design thinking techniques will be proposed as a methodology to create a bridge between different activity systems.

Protected by the Emotions of the Group: Perceived Emotional Fit and Disadvantaged Group Members' Activist Burnout

Psychological processes that hamper activism, such as activist burnout, threaten social change. We suggest that perceived emotional fit (i.e., perceiving to experience similar emotions as other disadvantaged group members) may buffer activist burnout by mitigating the deleterious effects of stressors that are associated with partaking in collective action. We investigated the relation between perceived emotional fit and activist burnout using three-wave longitudinal survey data of Palestinians in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We hypothesized that both higher general tendencies to fit emotionally with the ingroup (general perceived emotional fit) and increases over time in perceived emotional fit (change perceived emotional fit) would relate negatively to activist burnout. Supporting our hypotheses, both aspects of emotional fit were associated with lower activist burnout, even when controlling for classical predictors of collective action. This research highlights perceived emotional fit as an additional dimension to the role of emotions for sustainable collective action.

Socially induced false memories in the absence of misinformation

Ample evidence shows that post-encoding misinformation from others can induce false memories. Here, we demonstrate in two experiments a new, tacit form of socially generated false memories, resulting from interpersonal co-monitoring at encoding without communication of misinformation. Pairs of participants jointly viewed semantically coherent word lists, presented successively in blue, green, or red letters. Each individual was instructed to memorize words presented in one of the colors. One color remained unassigned (control condition). Participants (total N = 113) reported more false memories for non-presented words (lures) semantically related to partner-assigned than to control lists, although both list types were equally irrelevant to their own task. Notably, this effect also persisted for particularly rich memories. These findings show for the first time that social induction of false memories, even subjectively rich ones, does not necessarily require communication of deceptive information. This has important implications both theoretically and practically (e.g., in forensic contexts).

Shared Reality Effects of Tuning Messages to Multiple Audiences

Our study explores how communicating with audiences who hold opposite opinions about a target person can lead to a biased recall of the target's behaviors depending on whom a shared reality is created with. By extending the standard “saying-is-believing” paradigm to the case of two audiences with opposite attitudes toward a target person, we found that communicators evaluatively tune their message to the attitude of each audience. Still, their later recall of the target's behavior is biased toward the audience's attitude only for the audience with whom they created a shared reality. Shared reality creation was manipulated by receiving feedback that, based on the communicator's message, an audience was either able (success) or unable (failure) to successfully identify the target person, with the former creating a shared reality. These results highlight the importance of shared reality creation for subsequent recall when communicating with multiple audiences on a topic.

Shared Reality: From Sharing-Is-Believing to Merging Minds

Humans are fundamentally motivated to create a sense of shared reality—the perceived commonality of inner states (feeling, beliefs, and concerns about the world) with other people. This shared reality establishes a sense of both social connection and understanding the world. Research on shared reality has burgeoned in recent decades. We first review evidence for a basic building block of shared-reality creation: sharing-is-believing, whereby communicators tune their descriptions to align with their communication partner’s attitude about something, which in turn shapes their recall. Next, we describe recent developments moving beyond this basic building block to explore generalized shared reality about the world at large, which promotes interpersonal closeness and epistemic certainty. Together, this body of work exemplifies the synergy between relational and epistemic motives. Finally, we discuss the potential for another form of shared reality—shared relevance—to bridge disparate realities.

Multiple Shared Realities: The Context Sensitivity of the Saying-Is-Believing Effect

People adjust how they talk about someone depending on whether their audience likes or dislikes that person. When they do so, they end up recalling the person more positively or negatively afterwards. This is known as the saying-is-believing effect, and it shows how tuning communication to an audience's attitudes and beliefs shapes one's memories. But people navigate a rich social world where they talk about the same person to different audiences with different attitudes. The current research shows that people's representations change as they do so, thus demonstrating the context sensitivity of the saying-is-believing effect. The typical saying-is-believing procedure—read about a person, describe her to others who like/dislike her, and then recall the original information—was adapted to fit multiple audiences with opposing attitudes. Results show that the same communicators recall the same person differently as a function of the audience context.

Shared reality and abstraction: The social nature of predictive models

We propose that abstraction is an interpersonal process and serves a social function. Research on shared reality shows that in communication, people raise their level of abstraction in order to create a common understanding with their communication partner, which can subsequently distort their mental representation of the object of communication. This work demonstrates that, beyond building accurate models, abstraction also functions to build accurate models but also to build socially shared models - to create a shared reality.

Editorial Foreword: Applying Existential Social Psychology to Mental Health

Human existence is characterized by some rather unique psychological challenges. Because people can reflect on their lives and place in the world, they are regularly confronted with a variety of existential concerns: death and mortality; the burdens of freedom; uncertainty regarding one's identity; isolation from others; and indeterminate meaning in life. Existential social psychology (Greenberg, Koole, & Pyszczynski, 2004; Vail & Routledge, 2020) investigates whether and how such existential concerns shape everyday life and, as highlighted in the present special issue, how such processes impact mental health and social functioning.

Exploring the antecedents and consequences of impersonal trust

Purpose

Trust and impersonal trust, in particular, are of significant importance both for organizations and for innovative personnel, who are regarded human assets to organizations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents and consequences of impersonal trust in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The population of this study constituted the managers, specialists and personnel of a pharmaceutical company in Iran. Out of a total of 200 questionnaires having been administered, 187 were returned; and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for data analysis.

Findings

The findings of the study indicate that personal learning has a significant positive effect (β = 0.64) on impersonal trust, that interpersonal communication has a significant positive effect (β = 0.14) on impersonal trust, and that organizational justice perception, also, has a significant positive effect (β = 0.14) on impersonal trust. In addition, the findings show that impersonal trust has a significant positive effect both on job satisfaction (β = 0.47) and on innovation (B = 0.42) and job satisfaction has a significant positive effect (β = 0.39) on innovation. Moreover, impersonal trust, through job satisfaction, has a significant indirect effect (β = 0.18) on innovation; and personal learning, through organizational justice perception, does not have a significant indirect effect (β = 0.014) on impersonal trust.

Originality/value

This study is among only a few studies having investigated the antecedents and consequences of impersonal trust together. Also, in a developing country like Iran, impersonal trust has rarely been studied.

Shared reality: Construct and mechanisms

To provide background for the Special Issue on shared reality, we outline the construct of shared reality and underlying mechanisms. Shared reality is the experience of having in common with others inner states about the world. Inner states include the perceived relevance of something, as well as feelings, beliefs, or evaluations of something. The experience of having such inner states in common with others fosters the perceived truth of those inner states. Humans are profoundly motivated to create shared realities with others, and in so doing they fulfill their needs to have valid beliefs about the world and to connect with others.

A Tool for Assessing the Experience of Shared Reality: Validation of the German SR-T

Humans are highly motivated to achieve shared reality - common inner states (i.e., judgments, opinions, attitudes) with others about a target object. Scholarly interest in the phenomenon has been rapidly growing over the last decade, culminating in the development of a five-item self-report scale for Shared Reality about a Target (SR-T; Schmalbach et al., unpublished). The present study aims to validate the German version of the scale. Individuals can establish shared reality either by receiving social verification (i.e., agreement or confirmation from an interaction partner) or by aligning their inner state with that of their partner. To increase the scope of the present validation, we implemented both pathways of shared-reality creation in three studies (N = 522). Study 1 employed a social judgment task, in which participants assessed ambiguous social situations and received confirming (vs. disconfirming) feedback from their partner. Studies 2 and 3 build on the saying-is-believing paradigm, in which participants align their own evaluation of the target with their partner's judgment. Based on an evaluatively ambiguous description, participants communicated about a target person and later recalled information about the target (Study 2). To further generalize the findings, message production was omitted from the paradigm in Study 3. Overall, the five-item model of the SR-T evinced good fit and reliability. In Study 1, the SR-T reflected experimentally induced differences in commonality of judgments- even when controlling for several related state measures, such as Inclusion of Other in the Self and Need Threat. In Studies 2 and 3, the SR-T predicted participants' evaluative recall bias, which is an established, indirect index of communicators' shared-reality creation. This effect was stronger when participants overtly communicated with their study partner, but it still emerged without overt communication. Across all studies, correlations with related constructs support the convergent validity of the SR-T. In sum, we recommend the use of the SR-T in research on interpersonal processes and communication.

Applications of the reflective practice questionnaire in medical education

BACKGROUND

We sought to determine whether the Reflective Practice Questionnaire (RPQ) is a reliable measure of reflective capacity and related characteristics in medical students. We also planned to learn how the RPQ could be used in medical education.

METHODS

The RPQ is a 40 item self-report questionnaire that includes a multi-faceted approach to measuring reflective capacity. It also includes sub-scales on several other theoretically relevant constructs such as desire for improvement, confidence, stress, and job satisfaction. The reliabilities of reflective capacity and other sub-scales were determined by calculating their Cronbach alpha reliability values. In the present study, the RPQ was answered by 98 graduating fourth-year medical students from an American University, and these RPQ scores were compared with general public and mental health practitioner samples from a prior study using ANOVA and Bonferroni adjusted comparisons.

RESULTS

Medical students reported a higher reflective capacity than the general public sample, but students were statistically indistinguishable from the mental health practitioner sample. For medical students, reflective capacity was associated with features of confidence, stress, and desire for improvement. Job satisfaction was positively associated with confidence in communication with patients, and negatively associated with stress when interacting with patients. A cluster analysis revealed that around 19% of the medical students exhibited a relatively high level of anxiety interacting with patients, 23% were less engaged, 5% were dissatisfied, and 7% expressed a level of over-confidence in their knowledge and skills that was concerning.

CONCLUSIONS

The RPQ is a reliable measure of reflective capacity (Chronbach's alpha value = 0.84) and related characteristics (Cronbach's alpha values from 0.75 to 0.83) in medical students. The RPQ can be used as part of pre-post evaluations of medical education initiatives, to complement student self-reflection activities in the curriculum, and to identify students who might benefit from targeted intervention.

Shared social identity in leadership

In this paper we review recent evidence on the social identity model of leadership. First, we explain how this model is rooted in the social identity approach in social psychology and, specifically, the notion that shared reality and joint action in groups derives from shared social identity. We then show how effective leadership is a process of social identity management and we examine both the antecedents, the psychological and the political consequences of managing social identities.

The role of within-class consensus on mastery goal structures in predicting socio-emotional outcomes

Background

Within‐class consensus on mastery goal structures describes the extent to which students agree in their perceptions of mastery goal structures. Research on (work) teams suggests that higher levels of consensus within a group indicate a well‐functioning social environment and are thus positively related to beneficial socio‐emotional outcomes. However, the potential of within‐class consensus to predict socio‐emotional outcomes has not yet been explored in research on mastery goal structures.

Aims

This study aimed to test whether within‐class consensus on the three mastery goal structures dimensions of task, autonomy, and recognition/evaluation has predictive power for socio‐emotional outcomes in terms of classroom climate, negative classmate reactions to errors, and cooperative learning.

Sample

A total of 1,455 Austrian secondary school students (65.70% female) in 157 classrooms participated in this study.

Methods

Students responded to items measuring their perceptions of mastery goal structures, classroom climate, error climate, and cooperative learning. Items assessing mastery goal structures, error climate, and cooperative learning referred to the subject of mathematics and items assessing classroom climate referred to positive classmate relations without focusing on a subject.

Results

Results from multilevel structural equation models revealed that within‐class consensus on all mastery goal structures dimensions predicted a less negative error climate. Additionally, consensus regarding task and autonomy predicted more frequent use of cooperative learning strategies, and consensus regarding task predicted a more positive classroom climate.

Conclusions

Our findings show that higher levels of within‐class consensus on mastery goal structures enhance beneficial socio‐emotional outcomes. Moreover, the results emphasize the value of expanding the scope of educational research to the study of within‐class consensus.

Perspective taking: motivation and impediment to shared reality

Taking another person's perspective requires acknowledging that there is another viewpoint, which can challenge the concept of shared reality. At the same time, taking someone else's perspective can also preserve shared reality, by helping to explain how aspects of the world may be perceived differently by two different individuals. Thus, establishing or maintaining shared reality may be a primary motivator for perspective taking in everyday life. However, depending on the content (e.g., self-perceptions, assumptions about other people, cherished beliefs) used in constructing another perspective and comparing it with one's own, perspective taking may in some cases instead highlight differences between how people view the world, thus hindering a sense of shared reality.

Shared reality as collective closure

We draw on the theory of lay epistemics to understand how universal processes of knowledge formation drive the emergence, and determine the consequences of shared reality in groups. In particular, we highlight the role in these processes of the need for cognitive closure and credible epistemic authorities. Whereas the former construct explains why people seek a shared reality, the latter clarifies who the reality is shared with. In this connection, we review relevant bodies of empirical evidence that bear on the epistemic underpinnings of shared reality phenomena.

How shared reality is created in interpersonal communication

Communication is a key arena and means for shared-reality creation. Most studies explicitly devoted to shared reality have focused on the opening part of a conversation, that is, a speaker's initial message to an audience. The aspect of communication examined by this research is the evaluative adaptation (tuning) of the messages to the audience's attitude or judgment. The speaker's shared-reality creation is typically assessed by the extent to which the speaker's evaluative representation of the topic matches the audience-tuned view expressed in the message. We first review research on such audience-tuning effects, with a focus on shared-reality goals and conditions facilitating the generalization of shared reality. We then review studies using other paradigms that illustrate factors of shared-reality creation in communication, including mere message production, grounding, validation responses, and communication about commonly known information (including stereotypes) in intragroup communication. The different lines of research reveal the potency, but also boundary conditions, of communication effects on shared reality.

Epistemic companions: shared reality development in close relationships

We propose a framework outlining the development of shared reality in close relationships. In this framework, we attempt to integrate disparate close relationship phenomena under the conceptual umbrella of shared reality. We argue that jointly satisfying epistemic needs-making sense of the world together-plays an important but under-appreciated role in establishing and maintaining close relationships. Specifically, we propose that dyads progress through four cumulative phases in which new forms of shared reality emerge. Relationships are often initiated when people discover Shared Feelings, which then facilitate the co-construction of dyad-specific Shared Practices. Partners then form an interdependent web of Shared Coordination and ultimately develop a Shared Identity. Each emergent form of shared reality continues to evolve throughout subsequent phases, and, if neglected, can engender relationship dissolution.

Socially-shared cognition and consensus in small groups

This paper reviews recent work on socially-shared cognition in small groups. Major attention is devoted to the impact of information and preference sharing on the achievement of group consensus and the consequences of consensus (and dissensus) for the group and its members. The literature is organized in terms of the task context in which sharing occurs (i.e., group problem-solving/decision-making tasks vs. group-productivity tasks). Topics covered include information sharing in hidden-profile situations, regulation of socio-cognitive conflict, shared mental models, transactive memory systems, and group discussions involving collective action. The impact of group members' motives on information and preference sharing is highlighted, and more attention to relational (social) motives is suggested.

Regulating shared reality with micro-dynamics in the form of conversation

One of the central goals within communication is to establish whether people are on the same wavelength. Although such assessment can occur objectively, by exchanging and comparing viewpoints, people may also derive a sense of shared reality subjectively, through micro-dynamics in the form of conversation that inform them whether their views are shared. The present review outlines the role of these micro-dynamics in developing and regulating a shared reality. It focuses on three different contexts: intergroup communication, computer mediated communication and communication within intimate relationships. The review concludes with a discussion of the power of micro-dynamics in comparison to more explicit forms of social validation.