Describing autobiographical memories: Effects of shared reality and audience attitude valence on perceived authenticity and self-esteem

ABSTRACT

The current investigation examined how experiencing a shared reality during the social reconstruction of the past might relate to communicators’ perceived authenticity and self-esteem. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to describe an autobiographical memory to an audience who had either a positive or negative attitude toward the memory topic. Participants then reported perceptions of shared reality, authenticity, and self-esteem. Across both experiments, experiencing a shared reality with an audience who held a positive attitude was associated with greater self-perceived authenticity and self-esteem, whereas experiencing a shared reality with an audience who held a negative attitude was associated with lower ratings of authenticity and lower self-esteem. The effect of shared reality on self-esteem was mediated by perceptions of authenticity.

KEYWORDS:

• Authenticity
• shared reality
• autobiographical memory
• self-esteem

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Additional analyses indicate that the elaboration manipulation did not change this pattern of results, see supplemental materials at https://osf.io/k3fcd/.

2. Although expertise was not expected to influence the associations among shared reality, authenticity, and self-esteem, previous research suggests that shared reality is less likely to occur when expertise is low (Echterhoff et al., 2005). Therefore, we predicted that the hypothesized model would be present in the high expertise condition, but we were less confident that the pattern of results would replicate under low expertise conditions. Moderation and conditional process analyses in the manuscript collapse across expertise conditions. Analyses by expertise condition indicate that the pattern of results did not vary as a function of audience expertise, see supplemental materials for full description of materials and additional analyses at osf.io/k3fcd.

3. Although the expertise manipulation had a significant effect on shared reality, additional analyses indicated that audience expertise did not moderate the effect of shared reality on authenticity or self-esteem, and controlling for audience expertise did not alter the overall pattern of results in the conditional process model. Therefore, the main analyses collapse across this variable. Full reporting of analyses related to audience expertise can be found in supplemental materials.