Lecture 9 - Shared Reality Flashcards
How we define sharing
1) Communicating with others
2) Dividing up portions
3) Sharing an opinion
4) Held and experienced in common
4 is important
Believe we both share a thought about something
How we define reality
Reality refers to people’s subjective experience as opposed to the objective reality
Prefer information that provides the experience of realness even if this information
is less objectively accurate
We prefer the stuff that makes us FEEL like it is real/the truth
Shared Reality Theory
Shared reality refers to the motivated process of experiencing a commonality of inner states about some aspect of the world
– Inner states: thoughts, feelings, concerns
– Aspect of the world: object, event, experience (also called targets)
Focuses on social sharing and how this creates an objective reality
i.e being able to turn to someone with a subjective xp you both had and try to create an objective reality around it
- Commonality of
inner states
■ People must infer others’ inner states in order to
experience a commonality
■ This is beyond simply recognizing overt behaviours
– It is possible that people share the same
overt behaviours without sharing the same
inner states
■ Several mechanisms help achieve this: theory of
mind (understanding of other’s inner states), nonverbal behaviour (eg laughing means that person is happy)
- Target referent
■ Inner states must be about the same thing
■ People can use the knowledge of other’s inner
states to tell them something about the world
– Infants learn to understand parents’ inner world in order to learn about the world
■ Several mechanisms help achieve this: eye gaze,
pointing, verbal references
like of an adult looks both ways an infant may realize that crossing the road can be dangerous
- Motivated Process
2 Motives for this
■ The process of achieving shared reality is equally important to consider
■ Epistemic motives: feel certainty about one’s subjective experience
– Interpretation of the world is understood, true, and real
– Increases with uncertainty
■ Relational motives: feel close to and intimate with another person
– Allows people to feel secure and identified with others
– Increases with anxiety-arousing situations
- Subjective sense of sharing
Subjective commonality rather than objective commonality
■ Belief or experience of sharing a reality is necessary
■ Perceptions of sharing predict liking others beyond actual sharing (just believing you share stuff is enough)
Shared Reality Theory
Shared reality refers to the motivated process of experiencing a commonality of
inner states about some aspect of the world
■ 1) There must be a commonality of inner states
■ 2) The commonality must be about a target referent
■ 3) A process driven by epistemic and relational motives
■ 4) A subjective sense of sharing
What evidence is there for shared reality theory
■ Research tends to focus on interpersonal communication
■ Communicating can change how people interpret the target
■ Evidence for other pathways but communication has the most robust evidence
Empirical Evidence:
Saying-is-believing paradigm
■ Paradigm to examine shared reality created by Tory Higgins
■ Three people involved: a communicator, a target, and an audience
■ Participant takes the role of the communicator
■ Reads an essay about another student (i.e., the target)
– Ambiguous and could be interpreted as positive or negative
■ Told to describe the target’s behaviour to another person (i.e., the audience)
– Participant informed that the audience likes or dislikes the target
■ The audience has to identify the target based on this description
■ Descriptions coded for positive vs. negative evaluation
■ People tuned their message based on the audience’s attitudes
– If told the audience dislikes the target, describe person negatively (termed AUDIENCE TUNING)
– If told the audience likes the target, describe person positive
Empirical Evidence:
Memory Effects
■ After a delay, participants were asked to recall the original essay about the target
■ Participant’s own attitude is altered by their message
– Positive descriptions à Positive attitudes about the target
– Negative descriptions à Negative attitudes about the target
■ People remember the evaluative tone of the tuned message as the original
The description they made of the essay influence their memory of the essay
Empirical Evidence:
Extension
■ Mental representations are influenced by how people verbally describe an event
■ Extension of the paradigm:
– Audience tuning to audience’s knowledge (instead of attitudes)
– Target is a small group (vs. one person)
– Shown video-taped behaviour of the target (instead of essays)
■ Evidence also supports the conditions outlined previously
Shared Experiences
(Boothby et al., 2017
■ Does merely experiencing something with another person influence your experience?
■ Across two studies, participants either viewed images with another person or alone
(1) measured how well a person sitting with another person (close) knew that person
(2) One alone, one with a close person, one with a stranger
(2)
■ Measured image ratings in terms of liking and realness
■ Results show that people’s experiences are:
– Enhanced when experienced with close others
– Dampened when experienced with strangers
■ Provides evidence that interpersonal communication might not be necessary
Generalized Shared Reality
inner states with another person about the world
■ Same conditions for generalized shared reality
■ Evidence that this can be established between strangers and
close others (e.g., friends, romantic partners)
■ Most research focuses on relational and epistemic outcomes (shows positive impacts on both)
Dyadic Online Chat Study:
Aims
■ Generalized shared reality in strangers
■ Various operationalizations
■ Predicting relational and epistemic outcomes
