Abstract:

People adjust their information expression based on the audience’s attitude towards a certain object in communication, which is called the audience-tuning effect. The audience-tuning effect further affects memory. When an individual forms memory bias that is biased towards the audience’s attitude, they create a shared reality. Based on the theory of shared reality, this study adopted a sharing-is-believing paradigm to explore the audience-tuning effect of negative stereotypes of depression and its impact on memory in the context of interpersonal communication. The results showed that: 1) Participants would adjust their description and memory of individuals with depression based on the audience’s attitude towards them. When the audience attitude was positive (or negative), participants would describe and recall individuals with depression more positively (or negatively). 2) Compared to the neutral depression stereotype, the negative description bias and negative memory bias of the negative depression stereotype would be amplified by the audience’s negative attitude. These findings reveal that the audience’s attitudes in interpersonal communication play an important role in the shared reality construction of negative stereotypes of depression.

Key words: depression, negative stereotypes, shared reality, audience-tuning effect

摘要：

人们在沟通中根据受众这一沟通对象对某个话题的态度来调整自己的信息表达，该现象被称为受众调节效应。受众调节效应进一步影响记忆，当个体形成偏向受众态度的记忆偏差时，个体与受众便创造了关于某个话题的共享现实。本研究基于共享现实理论，采用共享即相信实验范式，在人际沟通情境下探究抑郁症消极刻板印象的受众调节效应及其对记忆的影响。结果发现：(1)被试会根据受众对抑郁症个体的态度来调整对抑郁症个体的描述和记忆，在受众态度积极(或消极)时，被试会更积极(或消极)地描述和回忆抑郁症个体；(2)相较于抑郁症中性刻板印象信息，受众消极态度会增强抑郁症消极刻板印象信息的负向描述偏差和负向记忆偏差。这些发现揭示了人际沟通中的受众态度在抑郁症消极刻板印象的共享现实建构中起到重要作用。

关键词: 抑郁, 消极刻板印象, 共享现实, 受众调节效应