Shared reality through social tuning of implicit prejudice

Skorinko, Jeanine; Sinclair, Stacey

doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.02.011

Cited by 12 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…For example, if two people share the same interpretation of an event, shared reality theory proposes that discussing this shared interpretation would both enhance their connection to one another and serve to confirm their understandings of what really happened during that event. Research supports the idea that both of these motives drive shared reality: people are more likely to create shared realities with individuals with whom they are motivated to connect, such as ingroup members (Echterhoff, Higgins, & Groll, 2005; Echterhoff, Lang, Krämer, & Higgins, 2009; Echterhoff, Kopietz, & Higgins, 2013; Sinclair, Lowery, Hardin, & Colangelo, 2005; Skorinko & Sinclair, 2018), and about targets they are uncertain about, such as ambiguous stimuli (Echterhoff & Higgins, 2017; Kopietz, Hellmann, Higgins, & Echterhoff, 2010; Pierucci, Echterhoff, Marchal, & Klein, 2014). This work has shown that humans are motivated to create shared realities to connect with each other and make sense of the world.…”

Section: Shared Reality Theorymentioning

confidence: 81%

Merged minds: Generalized shared reality in dyadic relationships.

Rossignac-Milon

Bolger

Zee

et al. 2021

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

137

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Many everyday conversations, whether between close partners or strangers interacting for the first time, are about the world external to their relationship, such as music, food, or current events. Yet, the focus of most research on interpersonal relationships to date has been on the ways in which partners perceive each other and their relationship. We propose that one critical aspect of interpersonal interactions is developing a sense of dyadic, generalized shared reality—the subjective experience of sharing a set of inner states (e.g., thoughts, feelings, or beliefs) in common with a particular interaction partner about the world in general, including the world external to the relationship. Across 9 studies, we use mixed methods to investigate the unique role of generalized shared reality in interpersonal interactions, both between close partners and strangers. We hypothesize that generalized shared reality predicts how people connect with each other and perceive the world around them. We also investigate the observable, dyadic behavioral signatures of generalized shared reality in interpersonal interactions. Finally, we examine the motivation to uphold an existing sense of generalized shared reality. We hypothesize that couples high on baseline generalized shared reality exhibit motivated, dyadic interaction behaviors to reaffirm their generalized shared reality in the face of experimentally manipulated threat. By identifying a unique dimension of everyday interactions, these studies aim to capture a critical aspect of the lived subjective experience of human relationships that has not been captured before.

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Section: Shared Reality Theorymentioning

confidence: 81%

Merged minds: Generalized shared reality in dyadic relationships.

Rossignac-Milon

Bolger

Zee

et al. 2021

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Techniques like the implicit association test (Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz 1998) and the affect misattribution procedure (Payne et al 2005), by contrast, target implicit attitudes. These measures are plausibly free from sensitivity bias, since responses are difficult to consciously misrepresent even if respondents would prefer to hide their views (Nosek 2007, though see Skorinko and Sinclair 2018). Nevertheless, a foundational assumption in the implicit attitudes literature is that implicit and explicit attitudes are fundamentally different constructs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When to Worry about Sensitivity Bias: A Social Reference Theory and Evidence from 30 Years of List Experiments

2020

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Eliciting honest answers to sensitive questions is frustrated if subjects withhold the truth for fear that others will judge or punish them. The resulting bias is commonly referred to as social desirability bias, a subset of what we label sensitivity bias. We make three contributions. First, we propose a social reference theory of sensitivity bias to structure expectations about survey responses on sensitive topics. Second, we explore the bias-variance trade-off inherent in the choice between direct and indirect measurement technologies. Third, to estimate the extent of sensitivity bias, we meta-analyze the set of published and unpublished list experiments (a.k.a., the item count technique) conducted to date and compare the results with direct questions. We find that sensitivity biases are typically smaller than 10 percentage points and in some domains are approximately zero.

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“…The classic in-group/out-group distinction relates to both relational and epistemic motives: People are less likely to desire connection with out-group members, relative to in-group members, or to trust them as a source of truth. Several studies have found that when communicating to an out-group audience (e.g., at a German institution, German students communicating to a Turkish student), participants exhibit audience tuning, but not recall bias (e.g., Echterhoff et al, 2005Echterhoff et al, , 2008; see also Skorinko & Sinclair, 2018). These results are inconsistent with a cognitive-dissonance explanation, which would predict greater dissonance (and greater attitude change) in the out-group condition (see Echterhoff et al, 2009, for an in-depth explanation).…”

Section: Sharing-is-believingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Higgins

Rossignac-Milon

Echterhoff

2021

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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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.

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Shared reality through social tuning of implicit prejudice

Cited by 12 publications

References 35 publications

Merged minds: Generalized shared reality in dyadic relationships.

Merged minds: Generalized shared reality in dyadic relationships.

When to Worry about Sensitivity Bias: A Social Reference Theory and Evidence from 30 Years of List Experiments

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

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