You Are The One I Want To Communicate With! Relational Motives Driving Audience-Tuning Effects on Memory

We investigated the role of relational motives in the saying-is-believing effect (Higgins & Rholes, 1978). Building on shared reality theory, we expected this effect to be most likely when communicators were motivated to get along with the audience. In an experiment, participants had to describe an ambiguous target to an audience who either liked or disliked the target. The audience had been previously evaluated as a desirable vs. undesirable communication partner. Only participants who communicated with a desirable audience tuned their messages to suit their audience’s attitude towards the target. In line with predictions, they also displayed an audience-congruent memory bias in later recall