Shared Reality Hypothesis

🧠 Psych - 163/200

Hey,

This is something very new, bit brain-intensive but enthralling study about how we perceive reality & around communities.

Let me tell you about Shared Reality Hypothesis.

What is it?

Shared reality is currently understood as the product of the motivated process of experiencing a commonality of inner (mental) states with others about the world.

What do you think of THIS reality?

Everyday life is full of examples of the social sharing of our internal states. For instance, when people meet a new employee at their workplace, they tend to create their impressions of the newcomer jointly with their colleagues, and they feel more confident in their impressions when others agree.

People take into account the (inferred) inner states of others, especially significant others, to construct or verify views about various types of issues.

For example, cues as to what others think help or enable us to evaluate other people or groups; to develop a sense of which movies are worthwhile seeing; to decide about a candidate to vote for in an election; or to form general political, moral, or religious convictions.

Why do I need to know?

Humans have a fundamental need to experience a shared reality with others. The 4 posits based are -

(a) that shared reality involves a (subjectively perceived) commonality of individuals’ inner states (not just observable behaviours);

(b) that shared reality is about some target referent;

(c) that for a shared reality to occur, the commonality of inner states must be appropriately motivated;

(d) that shared reality involves the experience of a successful connection to other people's inner states.

One of the conclusion of this study is the creation of shared reality from communication highlights a potentially important everyday mechanism underlying the construction of culturally shared memories and evaluations of the world—a basic mechanism for constructing social, cultural, and political beliefs.

Imagine community members who epistemically trust one another and/or want to maintain relationships with one another. When one member is or becomes aware of the inner states of another member regarding some topic (e.g., his or her beliefs or attitudes about something), audience tuning during interpersonal communication is likely to occur. This will shape the communicator’s own later memories and evaluations of the topic in the direction of their audience

References & Studies: -

1. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pps/4_5_pdfs/Echterhoff_final.pdf

2. Hausmann et al., 2008; Jost et al., 2007; Lau et al., 2001.

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