Conversational Pragmatics: Memory Reporting Strategies in Different Social Contexts

Abstract

Conversational pragmatics studies, among others, factors that affect the information we share with others. Previous research showed that when participants are unsure about the correctness of an answer, they report fewer answers. This behavior strongly depends on the incentive structure of the social context where the question-response exchange takes place. In this research we studied how the different incentive structure of several types of social contexts affects conversational pragmatics and the amount of information we are willing to share. In addition, we also studied how different levels of knowledge may affect memory reporting in different social contexts. Participants answered easy, intermediate, and difficult general knowledge questions and decided whether they would report or withhold their selected answer in different social contexts: formal vs. informal, and constrained (a context that promotes providing only responses we are certain about) vs. loose (with an incentive structure that maximizes providing any type of answer). Overall, our results confirmed that social contexts are associated with a different incentive structure which affect memory reporting strategies, and that the effect of social contexts depended on the difficulty of the questions. Our results highlight the relevance of studying the different incentive structures of social contexts to understand the underlying processes of conversational pragmatics, and stress the importance of considering metamemory theories of memory reporting.