Benefits of collaborative remembering in older and younger couples: the role of conversation dynamics and gender.

We experimentally explored whether and how conversation dynamics would benefit collaborative remembering in intimate couples over time. To this end, we ran a study with a three-factor mixed design with relationship type (couples vs. strangers) and age (older adults vs. younger adults) as between-participants variables, and remembering condition (collaborative vs. individual) as a within-participants variable. Thirty pairs of intimate couples (fifteen long-term relationship older couples, fifteen short-term relationship younger couples) and thirty pairs of corresponding stranger-pairs (including older strangers and younger strangers) were compared with respect to recall accuracy and conversation dynamics, specifically considering the role of gender. Results revealed significant collaborative facilitation only in older couples. Also, females' communication behaviours facilitated males' collaborative remembering performance only in older (vs. younger) couples. In addition, a gender-specific pattern of shifts from the individual to collaborative context emerged only in older couple (vs. strangers). The findings are consistent with the notion that a longer experience of collaboration and more effective conversation dynamics allow older (vs. younger) couples to perform better at collaborative remembering. We discuss processes underlying the observed gender differences, and the social and motivational implications of collaborative remembering.

Refugees' and non-refugee migrants' regret about migration and confidence in integration: The role of forcedness and perils before and during migration.

Refugees typically experience stronger migration forcedness and higher migration-related perils (harm, adversities and hardship) than do non-refugee migrants. We explored how refugees' and non-refugee migrants' perceptions of their own forcedness of migration and related perils before and during migration are associated with regret about leaving their country of origin and their confidence in integration. In two studies conducted with refugee and non-refugee migrants in Germany (total N = 336), we found correlations between perceived forcedness and premigration perils, and perils during migration, with meaningful differences between groups from different countries. Importantly, regret about migration was predicted by an interaction effect of perceived forcedness and migration perils: Perils encountered during migration increased regret about having migrated when perceived forcedness was low (vs. high). As important potential predictors of confidence in integration and regret, we also assessed discrimination experienced in the receiving society (Study 1) and resilience (Study 2). Importantly, we found that high (vs. low) perceived migration perils buffered negative effects of discrimination experienced in the host country. We discuss implications of our findings for integration in the receiving society, highlighting the role of perceived forcedness in coping with distressing experiences before and after arrival in the host country.

More to episodic memory than epistemic assertion: The role of social bonds and interpersonal connection.

Remembering is dynamically entangled in conversations. The communicative function of episodic memory can be epistemic, as suggested by Mahr & Csibra (M&C). However, remembering can have genuinely social functions, specifically, the creation or consolidation of interpersonal relationships. Autonoesis, a distinct feature of episodic memory, is more likely to have evolved in the service of social binding than of epistemic assertiveness.

Biased memory retrieval in the service of shared reality with an audience: The role of cognitive accessibility.

After communicators have tuned a message about a target person's behaviors to their audience's attitude, their recall of the target's behaviors is often evaluatively consistent with their audience's attitude. This audience-congruent recall bias has been explained as the result of the communicators' creation of a shared reality with the audience, which helps communicators to achieve epistemic needs for confident judgments and knowledge. Drawing on the "Relevance Of A Representation" (ROAR) model of cognitive accessibility from motivational truth relevance, we argue that shared reality increases the accessibility of information consistent (vs. inconsistent) with the audience's attitude. We tested this prediction with a novel reaction time task in three experiments employing the saying-is-believing paradigm. Faster reactions to audience-consistent (vs. audience-inconsistent) information were found for trait information but not for behavioral information. Thus, an audience-congruent accessibility bias emerged at the level at which impressions and judgments of other persons are typically organized. Consistent with a shared-reality account, the audience-consistent accessibility bias correlated with experienced shared reality with the audience about the target person and with epistemic trust in the audience. These findings support the view that the creation of shared reality with an audience triggers a basic cognitive mechanism that facilitates the retrieval of audience-congruent (vs. audience-incongruent) trait information about a target person. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Remembering in conversations: the social sharing and reshaping of memories.

People constantly talk about past experiences. Burgeoning psychological research has examined the role of communication in remembering by placing rememberers in conversational settings. In reviewing this work, we first discuss the benefits of collaborative remembering (transactive memory and collaborative facilitation) and its costs (collaborative inhibition, information sampling biases, and audience tuning). We next examine how conversational remembering affects subsequent memory. Here, we address influences on listeners' memory through social contagion, resistance to such influences, and then retrieval/reexposure effects on either speaker or listener, with a focus on retrieval-induced forgetting. Extending the perspective beyond single interactions, we consider work that has explored how the above effects can spread across networks of several individuals. We also explore how a speaker's motive to form a shared reality with listeners can moderate conversational effects on memory. Finally, we discuss how these various conversational effects may promote the formation of collective memories.

The role of action in verbal communication and shared reality.

In examining the utility of the action view advanced in the Pickering & Garrod (P&G) target article, I first consider its contribution to the analysis of language vis-à-vis earlier language-as-action approaches. Second, I assess the relation between coordinated joint action, which serves as a blueprint for dialogue coordination, and the experience of shared reality, a key concomitant and product of interpersonal communication.

Corrigendum: Feeling ostracized by others' smartphone use: the effect of phubbing on fundamental needs, mood, and trust.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901.].

Theory of collective mind.

Theory of mind research has traditionally focused on the ascription of mental states to a single individual. Here, we introduce a theory of collective mind: the ascription of a unified mental state to a group of agents with convergent experiences. Rather than differentiation between one's personal perspective and that of another agent, a theory of collective mind requires perspectival unification across agents. We review recent scholarship across the cognitive sciences concerning the conceptual foundations of collective mind representations and their empirical induction through the synchronous arrival of shared information. Research suggests that representations of a collective mind cause psychological amplification of co-attended stimuli, create relational bonds, and increase cooperation, among co-attendees.

Socially induced false memories in the absence of misinformation.

Ample evidence shows that post-encoding misinformation from others can induce false memories. Here, we demonstrate in two experiments a new, tacit form of socially generated false memories, resulting from interpersonal co-monitoring at encoding without communication of misinformation. Pairs of participants jointly viewed semantically coherent word lists, presented successively in blue, green, or red letters. Each individual was instructed to memorize words presented in one of the colors. One color remained unassigned (control condition). Participants (total N = 113) reported more false memories for non-presented words (lures) semantically related to partner-assigned than to control lists, although both list types were equally irrelevant to their own task. Notably, this effect also persisted for particularly rich memories. These findings show for the first time that social induction of false memories, even subjectively rich ones, does not necessarily require communication of deceptive information. This has important implications both theoretically and practically (e.g., in forensic contexts).

Feeling Ostracized by Others' Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust.

With phubbing (i.e., "The act of snubbing someone… by looking at your phone instead of paying attention") being a widespread phenomenon, a sound understanding of its emotional reverberations and consequences for interpersonal relationships is required. To the extent that phubbing is perceived as a momentary act of ostracism, it should influence both emotional and behavioral reactions. To address this issue empirically, we investigated effects of phubbing on variables previously shown to be affected by ostracism. Specifically, we examined in two studies how being phubbed affects participants' mood, satisfaction of fundamental needs, feelings of being ostracized (Study 1 and 2) and trust (Study 2). In Study 1, participants remembered a situation in which they were either phubbed, phubbed someone else or experienced an attentive conversation. In Study 2 different phubbing behaviors were manipulated during an ongoing conversation. Results from both studies suggest that phubbing triggers negative mood and feelings of ostracism, and threatens fundamental needs. Study 2 revealed that these effects were stronger when phubbing occurred three times (vs. once). Study 2 further demonstrated behavioral consequences of phubbing, namely that trust in a trust game was reduced when participants were phubbed three times (vs. once). We discuss conceptual and practical implications of smartphone use for emotion regulation and interpersonal relations.

Helping in the context of refugee immigration.

We review psychological approaches of helping behavior in the context of refugee immigration. Refugee migration, compared with nonrefugee migration, is characterized by greater forcedness and related perils. Taking into account perceptions of forcedness and perils, we examine potential helpers' responses at each of four successive stages toward helping people in perilous, distressing, or emergency situations: (1) noticing and recognizing distressing, help-demanding conditions; (2) taking responsibility; (3) knowing how to help; and (4) transfer of one's knowledge into action. In so doing, we discuss the role of different motives and functions of providing help (e.g. preserving refugees' dependency or facilitating their autonomy) and implications of unequal power relations between help providers and refugees.

Does oxytocin shield against negative effects of ostracism? A replication and extension.

Evidence collected in recent years suggests that OT can alleviate negative consequences of ostracism. However, it is unclear whether this effect requires favorable dispositions. Moreover, research is needed to replicate previous findings. We thus investigated whether a combination of OT and potentially leveraging traits shields against negative effects of ostracism in a direct and conceptual replication of previous work. Seventy-seven males, who varied on potential moderating features, were administered OT or a placebo, and were ostracized or included in the Cyberball paradigm. Results showed that OT tended to attenuate the drop in social comfort in response to ostracism, and induced participants, particularly those high in horizontal collectivism, to toss the ball more often toward an approaching co-player who had ostracized them earlier. Attachment avoidance did not moderate these effects. Thus, the study replicated OT's relieving effects on ostracism, but provided only partial support for the leveraging influence of person factors.

Observation inflation. Your actions become mine.

Imagining performing an action can induce false memories of having actually performed it-this is referred to as the imagination-inflation effect. Drawing on research suggesting that action observation-like imagination-involves action simulation, and thus creates matching motor representations in observers, we examined whether false memories of self-performance can also result from merely observing another person's actions. In three experiments, participants observed actions, some of which they had not performed earlier, and took a source-memory test. Action observation robustly produced false memories of self-performance relative to control conditions. The demonstration of this effect, which we refer to as observation inflation, reveals a previously unknown source of false memories that is ubiquitous in everyday life. The effect persisted despite warnings or instructions to focus on self-performance cues given immediately before the test, and despite elimination of sensory overlap between performance and observation. The findings are not easily reconciled with a source-monitoring account but appear to fit an account invoking interpersonal motor simulation.

Psychological Antecedents of Refugee Integration (PARI).

The successful management of refugee immigration, including refugee integration in host societies, requires a sound understanding of underlying psychological processes. We propose the psychological antecedents of refugee integration (PARI) model, highlighting perceived forcedness (i.e., coercion and loss of control from "push" factors) and ensuing perils (risks and potential suffering during migration) as distinctive factors of refugee (vs. voluntary) migration. According to our model, perceptions and subjective representations of forcedness and associated perils activate specific psychological processes relevant to refugee integration and thus moderate responses to the demands and stressors of the immigration situation. We conceptualize these distinctive influences for integration-relevant processes in both refugees and in residents. By pinpointing the unique features of refugee migration, PARI generates novel and specific hypotheses about psychological processes predicting refugee integration. For instance, refugees' memories of forcedness and associated perils should lead to a high level of preoccupation with the restoration of basic needs after arrival in a receiving country that interferes with integration-related activities. Conversely, residents' perceptions of forcedness and related perils may enhance empathy with refugees but may also magnify feelings of anxiety and threat. Implications for refugee integration are discussed for the domains of occupational work, education, and mental health.

Corrigendum: A Tool for Assessing the Experience of Shared Reality: Validation of the German SR-T.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00832.].

A Tool for Assessing the Experience of Shared Reality: Validation of the German SR-T.

Humans are highly motivated to achieve shared reality - common inner states (i.e., judgments, opinions, attitudes) with others about a target object. Scholarly interest in the phenomenon has been rapidly growing over the last decade, culminating in the development of a five-item self-report scale for Shared Reality about a Target (SR-T; Schmalbach et al., unpublished). The present study aims to validate the German version of the scale. Individuals can establish shared reality either by receiving social verification (i.e., agreement or confirmation from an interaction partner) or by aligning their inner state with that of their partner. To increase the scope of the present validation, we implemented both pathways of shared-reality creation in three studies (N = 522). Study 1 employed a social judgment task, in which participants assessed ambiguous social situations and received confirming (vs. disconfirming) feedback from their partner. Studies 2 and 3 build on the saying-is-believing paradigm, in which participants align their own evaluation of the target with their partner's judgment. Based on an evaluatively ambiguous description, participants communicated about a target person and later recalled information about the target (Study 2). To further generalize the findings, message production was omitted from the paradigm in Study 3. Overall, the five-item model of the SR-T evinced good fit and reliability. In Study 1, the SR-T reflected experimentally induced differences in commonality of judgments- even when controlling for several related state measures, such as Inclusion of Other in the Self and Need Threat. In Studies 2 and 3, the SR-T predicted participants' evaluative recall bias, which is an established, indirect index of communicators' shared-reality creation. This effect was stronger when participants overtly communicated with their study partner, but it still emerged without overt communication. Across all studies, correlations with related constructs support the convergent validity of the SR-T. In sum, we recommend the use of the SR-T in research on interpersonal processes and communication.

How communication goals determine when audience tuning biases memory.

After tuning their message to suit their audience's attitude, communicators' own memories for the original information (e.g., a target person's behaviors) often reflect the biased view expressed in their message--producing an audience-congruent memory bias. Exploring the motivational circumstances of message production, the authors investigated whether this bias depends on the goals driving audience tuning. In 4 experiments, the memory bias was found to a greater extent when audience tuning served the creation of a shared reality than when it served alternative, nonshared reality goals (being polite toward a stigmatized-group audience; obtaining incentives; being entertaining; complying with a blatant demand). In addition, the authors found that these effects were mediated by the epistemic trust in the audience-congruent view but not by the rehearsal or accurate retrieval of the original input information, the ability to discriminate between the original and the message information, or a contrast away from extremely tuned messages. The central role of epistemic trust, a measure of the communicators' experience of shared reality, was supported in meta-analyses across the experiments.

When Does Oxytocin Affect Human Memory Encoding? The Role of Social Context and Individual Attachment Style.

The neuropeptide oxytocin plays an essential role in regulating social behavior and has been implicated in a variety of human cognitive processes in the social domain, including memory processes. The present study investigates the influence of oxytocin on human memory encoding, taking into account social context and personality, which have previously been neglected as moderators for how oxytocin affects memory encoding. To examine the role of social context of encoding, we employed an established experimental paradigm in which participants perform a word-categorization task in either a joint (social) or individual (non-social) setting. To investigate the role of socially relevant personality factors, participants' adult attachment style (AAS) was assessed. Previous research has identified attachment style as a potent moderator of oxytocin effects in the social-cognitive domain, but here we investigated for the first time its role in memory encoding. Participants were invited in pairs and received either placebo or oxytocin intranasally. Forty-five minutes later, they were instructed to react to different word categories within a list of successively presented words. This task was performed individually in the non-social condition and simultaneously with the partner in the social condition. After a 24-h delay, memory for all words was tested individually in a surprise recognition memory test. Oxytocin effects on memory accuracy depended on participants' AAS. Specifically, oxytocin positively affected memory for participants who scored low on attachment dependence (who find dependence on others uncomfortable), but negatively affected memory for high scorers (who are comfortable depending on others). Oxytocin effects were not moderated by social vs. non-social context at encoding, and we discuss reasons for this outcome. Regardless of encoding condition or personality, oxytocin led to more liberal responding in the recognition memory test, which was also reflected in significantly higher false alarm rates (FARs) and a trend towards higher hit rates (HRs) compared to placebo. Overall, our results are consistent with an interactionist view on oxytocin effects on human cognitive functioning. Future research should further examine how oxytocin affects response biases via previous encoding and the ways in which biological dispositions linked to attachment style affect the process of memory encoding.

I belong but I'm still sad: Reminders of Facebook increase feelings of belonging but do not facilitate coping with sadness.

One way in which people may cope with sadness is to seek positive social contact. We examined whether subtle reminders of Facebook increase positive mood and thus attenuate the interest in social activities that is typically enhanced by sad mood induction. Participants watched either a loss-related sad or neutral video and were afterwards presented with either a Facebook, positive (sun) or neutral (Word) icon. We then examined their mood and their desire to engage in social activities as well as their feeling of belonging. The presentation of the Facebook icon increased feelings of belonging, but it did not influence participants' other responses to the sad video. Participants reported more negative mood and a greater desire to engage in social activities after the sad (vs. control) video regardless of the icon condition. The results suggest that the activation of thoughts about Facebook can enhance users' feeling of belonging; however, this effect might not be sufficient to facilitate coping with loss-related sadness.

How shared reality is created in interpersonal communication.

Communication is a key arena and means for shared-reality creation. Most studies explicitly devoted to shared reality have focused on the opening part of a conversation, that is, a speaker's initial message to an audience. The aspect of communication examined by this research is the evaluative adaptation (tuning) of the messages to the audience's attitude or judgment. The speaker's shared-reality creation is typically assessed by the extent to which the speaker's evaluative representation of the topic matches the audience-tuned view expressed in the message. We first review research on such audience-tuning effects, with a focus on shared-reality goals and conditions facilitating the generalization of shared reality. We then review studies using other paradigms that illustrate factors of shared-reality creation in communication, including mere message production, grounding, validation responses, and communication about commonly known information (including stereotypes) in intragroup communication. The different lines of research reveal the potency, but also boundary conditions, of communication effects on shared reality.