Adjusting shared reality: Communicators' memory changes as their connection with their audience changes

Echterhoff G., Kopietz R., Higgins E.T.

Abstract

Communicators' memory can be shaped by their tuning of a message to their audience's attitude, reflecting their creation of a shared reality with the audience. We investigated whether this audience-tuning effect on communicators' subsequent memory is sensitive to post-message changes in their personal connection with their audience. In Experiment 1, we created conditions unfavorable to shared reality, that is, communication with an out-group audience. The audience-tuning memory effect was absent when communication- success feedback was impersonal (experimenter-transmitted), replicating previous findings. However, it was present when success feedback was personally communicated by the out-group audience. In Experiment 2, the effect was eliminated when communicators learned that their message, intended for an in-group audience, was mistakenly delivered to an out-group audience. In Experiment 3, such elimination also occurred when the mistaken audience remained an in-group member. Thus, the personal (vs. group) relation is critical. In sum, memory adjustment reflects the situatedness of shared reality. © 2013 Guilford Publications, Inc.