Shared experience
People spend much of their lives in the company of other people, often engaging in similar activities but not directly or explicitly communicating. For example, people sit through meetings and webinars, listen to music at concerts, view artwork in galleries, and watch television together—often socially but silently. How does jointly attending to things change people's experiences of them?
Initial experiments revealed that experiences were more intense when shared (Boothby, Clark, & Bargh, 2014). Participants judged a pleasant chocolate as more flavorful when they tasted it at the same time as another person compared to when that person was present but engaged in a different activity. To determine whether it’s always better to share an experience, a different set of participants tasted unpleasantly bitter chocolate (90% dark baker’s chocolate). This time, the chocolate was judged to be less likeable when tasted together with another person compared to when that other person was present but doing something else. Across studies, participants reported feeling more absorbed in the tasting experience when it was shared compared to when it was not, suggesting that attention was heightened during shared experiences.
Additional studies found commensurate affects among friends viewing images together; compared to when viewed alone, photographs were enhanced (better liked and seen as more real) when co-experienced with a friend and were dampened (liked less and seen as less real) when co-experienced with a stranger (Boothby, Smith, Clark, & Bargh, 2017).
Furthermore, the social context in which experiences unfold matters for whether or not those experiences will be amplified. For instance, a person focused on the same activity as oneself might have a greater impact on one’s own experience when that person is psychologically close to oneself versus psychologically distant. Erica and colleagues found that regardless of whether the psychological distance between a participant and a confederate was manipulated via social distance or spatial distance, chocolate tasted simultaneously was only enjoyed more when co-experiencers were psychologically close (Boothby, Smith, Clark, & Bargh, 2016).
Building on her foundational research on shared experience, Erica and colleagues recently introduced a theory of collective mind (Shteynberg et al., 2023). Whereas theory of mind research has traditionally focused on the ascription of mental states to a single individual, theory of collective mind proposes a shared mental perspective, wherein the self and other converge in their experience. Research suggests that representations of a collective mind cause psychological amplification of co-attended stimuli, create relational bonds, and increase cooperation, among co-attendees.
shared reality & co-constructing truth
Together with collaborator Maya Rossignac-Milon, Erica investigates how people rely on one another in order to achieve a fundamental epistemic goal: ensuring that they perceive the world the way it objectively is. The aim of this research is to advance the understanding of how people jointly establish their perceptions, beliefs, and memories, in pursuit of the truth.
They proposed a model of dyad-specific generalized shared reality—the experience of sharing a dyad-specific set of inner states (e.g., feelings, beliefs, or concerns) in common with another person about the world in general (Rossignac-Milon, Bolger, Zee, Boothby, & Higgins, 2020), employing mixed methods (self-report, behavioral coding, computational linguistic analyses, and experimental paradigms) to examine generalized shared reality across relationship types (close partners, strangers, and romantic partners) and across various contexts (in daily life, in online conversations, and in face-to-face conversations) in nine studies. Across contexts and relationship types, generalized shared reality relates to key relational and epistemic variables—both how people connect with each other and how they make sense of the world. Further, experimentally challenging generalized shared reality triggers motivated dyadic behaviors to reaffirm this shared reality. These findings highlight the importance of shared reality in dyadic relationships and human experience.
In another project, they found that people verify their experiences and develop a sense of shared reality during conversation, and this, in turn, enhances the realness of their experiences (Rossignac-Milon, Boothby, Higgins, & Clark, under review). Conversation partners who talk more about the images perceive them as more real, and this effect is mediated by the extent to which they create a sense of shared reality during their conversation. They also find that romantic couples’ perceptions of realness change significantly over the course of a conversation, with effects lasting at least one week after the conversation. Experimentally casting doubt on couples’ beliefs about their shared reality disrupts the effect of conversation on realness, suggesting that establishing shared reality is a critical mechanism through which conversation affects perceptions of realness. This work provides evidence that conversations enhance realness through the establishment of shared reality.
Publications
work in progress
Rossignac-Milon, M., Boothby, E. J., Clark, M. S., & Higgins, E. T. More real together: Conversation enhances realness through generalized shared reality. Manuscript in Preparation.