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.

In it together: Shared reality with instrumental others is linked to goal success.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on Sep 07 2023 (see record 2024-05962-001). In the original article, the abstract was revised. Specifically, there were errors in the the second and third sentences of the fifth paragraph of the Shared Reality section, fifth sentence of the Present Research section, An updated Figure 1 now appears in the erratum. NIO counterpart and and the specific note in Table 3, the first parenthetical text in the Procedure and Materials section in Study 2c, the phrase its NIO counterpart in the Discussion section of Study 2c, last sentence of the second paragraph of Study 3, third sentence in the third paragraph of Study 3, first sentence in the third paragraph of the Results section, the phrase their NIO counterparts in both the Self-Reported Goal Success and GPA sections of Study 4c, NIO counterpart and the specific note in Table 9, last phrase in the second paragraph in the Discussion section of Study 4, and the in-text citation of Footnote 9 in the Contribution to Understanding the Interpersonal Influences on Goal Success.] Why are some people more successful than others? In addition to individual factors (e.g. self-control), research has recently suggested that the quality of people's interpersonal relationships is crucial for success. Successful people do not just like and feel close to instrumental objects (e.g., study material, the gym), they also like and feel close to instrumental others (IOs; people who make goal success more likely). Yet instrumental people have one crucially distinct feature that instrumental objects do not: A mind of their own. We propose that while a growing body of work suggests that the sense of closeness to IOs (others who make goal success more likely) is crucial for goal success, prior work has not examined how the sense of the quality of people's relationships with IOs, and therefore goal success, likely depends on their ability to "merge minds" with them, experiencing both the goal and the world at large (i.e., shared reality) in the same way as one's IO contributes to goal success. Specifically, the present research (N = 1,326) explored (a) whether people experience shared reality-the perception of shared attitudes and judgments about the world-with IOs and (b) whether those who do so achieve greater goal success. Participants perceiving their romantic partner as instrumental for their goals experienced more shared reality with them (Study 1); participants also reported greater shared reality with IOs relative to noninstrumental others (NIO; Study 2). Higher shared reality with IOs was linked to more goal success initially, (Studies 2-4), 3-4 weeks later (Study 2c), and higher grade point averages (Study 4). These effects held when controlling for IO liking, closeness, epistemic trust, and NIO shared reality. Self-efficacy consistently mediated the effect of IO shared reality on goal success, indicating that IO shared reality may bolster people's epistemic confidence in their abilities. Overall, findings suggest that shared reality with IOs may play an important role in goal success. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Grounding together: Shared reality and cleansing practices.

We propose that cleansing behaviors and other acts of separation or connection have more powerful effects when they are grounded in shared practices - in a shared reality. We conceptualize sensorimotor and shared reality effects as synergistic. Most potent should be physical behaviors performed collectively as a shared practice (e.g., communal bathing), grounded both in sensorimotor experience and in shared reality.

Merged minds: Generalized shared reality in dyadic relationships.

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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Shared reality and abstraction: The social nature of predictive models.

We propose that abstraction is an interpersonal process and serves a social function. Research on shared reality shows that in communication, people raise their level of abstraction in order to create a common understanding with their communication partner, which can subsequently distort their mental representation of the object of communication. This work demonstrates that, beyond building accurate models, abstraction also functions to build accurate models but also to build socially shared models - to create a shared reality.

Causal processes in psychology are heterogeneous.

All experimenters know that human and animal subjects do not respond uniformly to experimental treatments. Yet theories and findings in experimental psychology either ignore this causal effect heterogeneity or treat it as uninteresting error. This is the case even when data are available to examine effect heterogeneity directly, in within-subjects designs where experimental effects can be examined subject by subject. Using data from four repeated-measures experiments, we show that effect heterogeneity can be modeled readily, that its discovery presents exciting opportunities for theory and methods, and that allowing for it in study designs is good research practice. This evidence suggests that experimenters should work from the assumption that causal effects are heterogeneous. Such a working assumption will be of particular benefit, given the increasing diversity of subject populations in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Can Identity Conflicts Impede the Success of Ethnic Minority Students? Consequences of Discrepancies Between Ethnic and Ideal Selves.

Because of stigma and underrepresentation, many ethnic minority students may find it difficult to align their ethnicities with their ideal selves. However, these difficulties and their potential consequences have been empirically neglected. To inform this gap in the literature, we propose that the novel concept of ethnic/ideal self-discrepancies (i.e., perceived mismatches between who a person aspires to be and this person's conception of their ethnic self) is associated with the academic outcomes of ethnic minority students. As hypothesized, large ethnic/ideal self-discrepancies predict high academic disengagement, according to cross-sectional data from Study 1 ( n = 147) and Study 2 ( n = 105), as well as high academic disengagement 2 months later according to half-longitudinal data from Study 2 ( n = 78). In Study 3 ( n = 99), ethnic minority students experimentally induced to perceive high ethnic/ideal self-discrepancies reported significantly higher academic disengagement than ethnic minority students in a low discrepancy condition.

Feeling distressed from making decisions: Assessors' need to be right.

Our research posits that decision-making is particularly distressing for individuals with high assessment tendencies. Assessment involves truth concerns about making the "right" decision. We hypothesize that people with high assessment experience greater distress during decision-making because of their concerns about making a wrong decision. In four studies of chronic assessment conducted across four different decision contexts, we found assessment to be positively associated with distress, with this relation being mediated by concerns with being wrong. A meta-analysis of these results provided support for the robustness of this positive association. Finally, a fifth experimental study that induced assessment found the same association with distress. Moreover, an implicit measure of truth concerns mediated this positive association. Given the prevalence of decision-making activities in everyday life, our findings about how truth concerns can cause distress have important implications for the psychological well-being of assessment-oriented individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record

Epistemic companions: shared reality development in close relationships.

We propose a framework outlining the development of shared reality in close relationships. In this framework, we attempt to integrate disparate close relationship phenomena under the conceptual umbrella of shared reality. We argue that jointly satisfying epistemic needs-making sense of the world together-plays an important but under-appreciated role in establishing and maintaining close relationships. Specifically, we propose that dyads progress through four cumulative phases in which new forms of shared reality emerge. Relationships are often initiated when people discover Shared Feelings, which then facilitate the co-construction of dyad-specific Shared Practices. Partners then form an interdependent web of Shared Coordination and ultimately develop a Shared Identity. Each emergent form of shared reality continues to evolve throughout subsequent phases, and, if neglected, can engender relationship dissolution.

Stepping forward together: Could walking facilitate interpersonal conflict resolution?

Walking has myriad benefits for the mind, most of which have traditionally been explored and explained at the individual level of analysis. Much less empirical work has examined how walking with a partner might benefit social processes. One such process is conflict resolution-a field of psychology in which movement is inherent not only in recent theory and research, but also in colloquial language (e.g., "moving on"). In this article, we unify work from various fields pointing to the idea that walking together can facilitate both the intra- and interpersonal pathways to conflict resolution. Intrapersonally, walking supports various psychological mechanisms for reconciliation, including creativity, locomotion motivation, and embodied notions of forward progress. Both alone and in combination with its effects on mood and stress, walking can encourage individual mindsets conducive to resolving conflict (e.g., divergent thinking). Interpersonally, walking can allow partners to reap the cognitive, affective, and behavioral advantages of synchronous movement, such as increased positive rapport, empathy, and prosociality. Walking partners naturally adopt cooperative (as opposed to competitive) postural stances, experience shared attention, and can benefit from discussions in novel environments. Overall, despite its prevalence in conflict resolution theory, little is known about how movement influences conflict resolution practice. Such knowledge has direct implications for a range of psychological questions and approaches within negotiation and alternative mediation techniques, clinical settings, and the study of close relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record

Moving on or digging deeper: Regulatory mode and interpersonal conflict resolution.

Conflict resolution, in its most basic sense, requires movement and change between opposing motivational states. Although scholars and practitioners have long acknowledged this point, research has yet to investigate whether individual differences in the motivation for movement from state-to-state influence conflict resolution processes. Regulatory Mode Theory (RMT) describes this fundamental motivation as locomotion. RMT simultaneously describes an orthogonal motivational emphasis on assessment, a tendency for critical evaluation and comparison. We argue that this tendency, in the absence of a stronger motivation for locomotion, can obstruct peoples' propensity to reconcile. Five studies, using diverse measures and methods, found that the predominance of an individual's locomotion over assessment facilitates interpersonal conflict resolution. The first two studies present participants with hypothetical conflict scenarios to examine how chronic (Study 1) and experimentally induced (Study 2) individual differences in locomotion predominance influence the motivation to reconcile. The next two studies investigate this relation by way of participants' own conflict experiences, both through essay recall of previous conflict events (Study 3) and verbal narratives of ongoing conflict issues (Study 4). We then explore this association in the context of real-world conflict discussions between roommates (Study 5). Lastly, we examine results across these studies meta-analytically (Study 6). Overall, locomotion and assessment can inform lay theories of individual variation in the motivation to "move on" or "dig deeper" in conflict situations. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of using RMT to go beyond instrumental approaches to conflict resolution to understand fundamental individual motivations underlying its occurrence. (PsycINFO Database Record

Marginal and happy? The need for uniqueness predicts the adjustment of marginal immigrants.

Marginalization is often presented as the strategy associated with the worst adjustment for immigrants. This study identifies a critical variable that buffers marginal immigrants from the negative effects of marginalization on adjustment: The need for uniqueness. In three studies, we surveyed immigrants recruited on university campuses (n = 119, n = 116) and in the field (n = 61). Among marginal immigrants, a higher need for uniqueness predicted higher self-esteem (Study 1), affect (Study 2), and life satisfaction (Study 3), and marginally higher happiness (Study 2) and self-esteem (Study 3). No relationship between the need for uniqueness and adjustment was found among non-marginal immigrants. The adaptive value of the need for uniqueness for marginal immigrants is discussed.