Abstract
After tuning messages to their audience’s attitude, communicators’ subsequent memories for the topic are often biased toward their audience-congruent messages. In the context of personnel assessment in an organization, we examined the role of audience characteristics in this audience-tuning effect. Student communicators tuned their description of an employee to either an equal-status audience (a student temp) or a higher-status audience (a company board member). Audience-tuning occurred under both conditions, but a memory bias was found only in the equal-status condition. This audience-status effect was mediated by epistemic and relational trust in the audience. Apparently, the equal-status audience, while lacking domain-specific expertise, qualifies as a more trustworthy partner in creating a shared reality, which fulfills both epistemic and affiliative motives.
References
(1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper.
(1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
(1989). AIDS und das Problem der Prävention – Fakten und Fiktionen [
AIDS and the problem of prevention: Facts and fiction ]. Journal für Sozialforschung, 29, 97–128.(1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182.
(1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.
(1981). Ethnocentrism and its role in interpersonal trust. In , Scientific inquiry and the social sciences (pp. 345–359). New York: Jossey-Bass.
(1998). Intergroup relations. In , The handbook of social psychology (pp. 554–594). New York: McGraw-Hill.
(1998). Some cognitive consequences of communication. In , Social and cognitive approaches to interpersonal communication (pp. 259–278). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1981). Definite reference and mutual knowledge. In , Elements of discourse understanding (pp. 10–63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(1982). Audience design in meaning and reference. In , Language and comprehension (pp. 287–296). New York: Elsevier.
(1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(2006). Eine deutsche Skala zum Konstrukt “Bedürfnis nach kognitiver Geschlossenheit (NFCC)/Persönliches Strukturbedürfnis (PNS)” [
A German scale for the construct “Need for cognitive closure/personal need for structure” ]. In , ZUMA-Informationssystem. Elektronisches Handbuch sozialwissenschaftlicher Erhebungsinstrumente [ZUMA information system: Electronic handbook of data collection methods in the social sciences ] (Version 10.0). Mannheim, Germany: ZUMA.(1964). Human nature and the social order. New York: Schocken Books. (Original work published 1902).
(1993). The psychology of attitudes. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
(1978). Causal inferences about communicators and their effect on opinion change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 424–435.
(2005). Audience-tuning effects on memory: The role of shared reality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 257–276.
(
in press ). Shared reality: Experiencing commonality with others’ inner states about the world. Perspectives on Psychological Science.(2008). How communication goals determine when audience tuning biases memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(1), 3–21.
(1950). Informal social communication. Psychological Review, 57, 271–282.
(1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
(2003). Social beings: A core motives approach to social psychology. New York: Wiley.
(1959). The bases of social power. In , Studies in social power (pp. 150–167). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
(1989). The effects of intended audience on message production and comprehension: Reference in a common ground framework. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 203–219.
(2001). A relational approach to cognition: Shared experience and relationship affirmation in social cognition. In , Cognitive social psychology: The Princeton Symposium on the legacy and future of social cognition (pp. 3–17). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1996). Shared reality: How social verification makes the subjective objective. In , Handbook of motivation and cognition: The interpersonal context (Vol. 3, pp. 28–84). New York: Guilford.
(1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
(1981). The “communication game”: Implications for social cognition and persuasion. In , Social cognition: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 1, pp. 343–392). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1992). Achieving “shared reality” in the communication game: A social action that creates meaning. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 11, 107–131.
(1999). “Saying is believing” effects: When sharing reality about something biases knowledge and evaluations. In , Shared cognition in organizations: The management of knowledge (pp. 33–49). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
(2007). Effects of communication on social knowledge: Sharing reality with individual vs. group audiences. Japanese Psychological Research, 49, 89–99.
(1984). Social encoding and subsequent attitudes, impressions, and memory: “Context-driven” and motivational aspects of processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 26–39.
(1978). “Saying is believing”: Effects of message modification on memory and liking for the person described. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 14, 363–378.
(2008). Creating shared memories in conversation: Toward a psychology of collective memory. Social Research, 75, 183–216.
(1993). Towards a single-process uncertainty reduction model of social motivation in groups. In , Group motivation: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 173–190). London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
(2001). Social identity, leadership, and power. In , The use and abuse of power: Multiple perspectives on the causes of corruption (pp. 159–180). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
(1953). Communication and persuasion: psychological studies of opinion change. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
(2007). Shared reality, system verification, and the relational basis of ideological beliefs. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1, retrieved January 10, 2008 from www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751–9004.2007.00056.x.
(1979). Personal relationships: Their structures and processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1991). Perspective-taking in communication: Representations of others’ knowledge in reference. Social Cognition, 9, 2–24.
(2006). Groups as epistemic providers: Need for closure and the unfolding of group-centrism. Psychological Review, 113, 84–100.
(2005). Says who? Epistemic authority effects in social judgment. In , Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 37, pp. 346–392). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
(1993). Motivated resistance and openness to persuasion in the presence or absence of prior information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 861–876.
(2001). Is it lonely at the top? The independence and interdependence of power holders. Research in Organizational Behavior, 23, 43–91.
(2001). Shared reality and social influence in groups and organizations. In , Social influence in social reality: Promoting individual and social change (pp. 33–52). Seattle, WA: Hogrefe & Huber.
(1974). Transmission of attitude-relevant information through a communication chain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 81–94.
(1992). Personal and contextual factors in communication: A review of the “communication game.” In , Language, interaction, and social cognition (pp. 144–171). London: Sage.
(1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
(1998). How what we tell becomes what we know: Listener effects on speaker’s long-term memory for events. Discourse Processes, 26, 1–25.
(1981). Personal involvement as a determinant of argument-based persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 847–855.
(2004). SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 36, 717–731.
(2002). Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 88–106.
(1936). The psychology of social norms. New York: Harper & Brothers.
(2001). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(1982). Asymptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects in structural models. In , Sociological methodology 1982 (pp. 290–312). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
(2002). Communication effects on memory and judgment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 32, 531–546.
